Asian stock markets are mostly trading lower on Monday with investors treading cautiously and pressing some sales ahead of quarterly earnings reports. A none too positive lead from Wall Street where stocks ended flat on Friday despite upbeat jobs data, is also contributing to the weakness in Asian markets.
In the Australian market, energy, mining, information technology and property trusts stocks are trading weak. Healthcare and industrial stocks are edging higher, while financial and consumer discretionary stocks are trading flat.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index is down 14.4 points or 0.3 percent at 4,480. The broader All Ordinaries index is trading at 4,500, down 13.8 points or 0.3 percent from its previous close.
Among top miners, BHP Billiton (BHP, BBL) is down 0.4 percent and Rio Tinto (RIO, RIO.L) is down marginally.
In the banking sector, ANZ Bank is up 0.2 percent and Westpac (WBK) is adding 0.3 percent, while Commonwealth Bank of Australia and National Australia Bank are down marginally. Bendigo & Adelaide Bank is trading modestly higher, while Bank of Queensland is down by over 4 percent.
Regis Resources, Beach Energy, Newcrest Mining, Challenger and Mirvac Group are trading lower by 2 to 3 percent. Oil Search, GPT Group, Amcor, Perseus Mining and Westfield Retail Trust are also trading notably lower.
Seven West Media is trading higher by over 6 percent. QR National is up more than 5 percent and Atlas Iron is trading 4.6 percent up.
Iluka Resources, Downer EDI, Seek, Myer Holdings and Leighton Holdings are also up in positive territory with strong gains.
In economic news, job ads in Australia fell for the sixth straight month in September. According to the monthly ANZ Job Ads survey, the number of job advertisement fell 2.8 percent in September.
With this, the total number of job advertisements has now fallen for six months and is 10.8 percent below levels seen a year ago. Internet advertising declined 2.8 per cent in September, while newspaper ads fell 3.6 percent in the month.
Among other markets in the Asia-Pacific region, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are all trading weak, while Indonesia and New Zealand are trading in positive territory with modest gains. The Japanese market is closed for a holiday for Health Sports Day. Markets across the region had ended mostly higher on Friday.
On Wall Street, stocks ended on a mixed note on Friday despite showing some strength early on in the session. A fairly encouraging monthly jobs report aided sentiment and lifted stock prices early on, but traders took some profits towards the end of the session.
While the Dow ended up 34.8 points or 0.3 percent at 13,610.2, the Nasdaq slid 13.3 points or 0.4 percent to 3,136.2 and the S&P 500 edged down 0.5 points or less than a tenth of a percent to 1,460.9.
Major European markets moved mostly higher on Friday. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 index moved up 0.7 percent, the German DAX index and the French CAC 40 index gained 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.
U.S. crude oil ended sharply lower on Friday, mainly on demand concerns as the global economic growth slowdown scenario persisted and worries over the brewing tensions in the Middle East situation eased.
Crude for November delivery dropped $1.83 or 2 percent to close at $89.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Friday, after scaling a high of $91.71 a barrel intraday.
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