ASX-listed gold miners rallied further on Friday morning after the precious metal notched up its fourth day of gains, its longest winning streak in over three months, but that wasn't enough to offset losses elsewhere as the sharemarket started its final trading session of the year in the red.
Newcrest Mining advanced 3.7 per cent in early trade, while smaller peers Evolution Mining jumped 7.3 per cent and Northern Star Resources 6 per cent.
Gains in gold miners could only partially offset selling in heavyweight corners of the market such as banking, where ANZ, NAB, Westpac and CBA all dropped by between 0.6 and 0.9 per cent. The big diversified miners such as BHP and Rio Tinto also traded lower by 1.1 per cent and 0.6 per cent, respectively, while South32 shed 2 per cent and Fortescue 0.9 per cent as the iron ore price slipped a little on Thursday night to $US80.43/tonne.
With blue-chip names such as Wesfarmers, Woolworths, Macquarie, Telstra and AMP all trading in the red, the S&P;/ASX 200 index is down 20 points, or 0.4 per cent, at 5680 points. Trading will close two hours early at 2:10pm, AEDT, on the ASX's final trading session of the year.
Amid thin holiday trading and a dearth of corporate news, fund manager Hunter Hall International dropped 9 per cent to $2.95 on its return to trade as the company confirmed in a statement to the ASX the resignation of founder and chief executive and investment officer Peter Hall for "personal and family reasons". Mr Hall will remain for another six months, the company said.
Gold investors finally have something to smile about after a difficult few months for the traditional safehaven asset, which has dropped by around 15 per cent over the past six months, with the bulk of those losses coming since the US election victory of Donald Trump on November 8.
But in recent days the yellow metal has managed to advance 2.6 per cent, adding 1 per cent overnight to last fetch $US1157.70/ounce as the greenback eased. In July it traded as high as $US1366.33/oz, and is still up a generous 9 per cent over 2016 to make it one of the better performing assets for the year despite its reversal of fortunes. The All Ordinaries gold mining index has done spectacularly - climbing by more than 50 per cent this year.
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