MELBOURNE - Australian stocks eased 0.3 per cent on Wednesday as falls in the biggest companies outweighed record highs in building products maker Rinker and takeover target WMC Resources.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 ended down 11.2 points at 3,869.4 off Monday's record close.
Dealers and analysts said there were no signs of
broad-based selling, but the fall of the US dollar against the Aussie could start to weigh on the outlook of those Australian companies heavily dependent on sales offshore.
"The market's had a tremendous rally over the last fortnight. Obviously those things don't move in straight lines. So there's definitely a bit of profit taking around," said ABN AMRO's head of sales trading, Leigh Gardner.
"Another thing to keep in mind is we had a very strong Aussie dollar again overnight. If that continues, you could in fact get concerns about companies with high levels of offshore earnings."
Top stocks Telstra and News Corp NWS.AX led the market lower, both down nearly 1 per cent.
And weaker metals and oil prices knocked top miner BHP Billiton down 1.6 per cent to A$14.19 and Rio Tinto down 1.7 per cent to A$38.00.
However takeover target WMC Resources raced 4.8 per cent higher to a record close of A$7.39 in late trade on speculation that another miner was going to make a bid for the copper and nickel miner, trumping a A$7.4 billion bid from Switzerland-based Xstrata XTA.L that was rejected last month by WMC.
Heavy construction materials maker Rinker Group surged 4.8 per cent to a record A$9.38 after topping market forecasts with a 26 per cent rise in first-half profit and upgrading its full-year outlook.
"It looks like the buyers are having a hard time finding stock," ING Investment Management dealer Ruppen Margarian said.
Australia's biggest investment bank, Macquarie Bank, jumped as much as 3 per cent to an all-time high of A$43.00, then eased to finish up 0.3 per cent at A$41.85, after reporting a 17 per cent jump in first-half profit and raising its outlook to expect its full-year profit to exceed last year.
"A lot of that upside would have been factored in already," said Nomura Australia equities strategist Eric Betts.
Investors were initially pleased with David Jones's 9.3 per cent sales growth in the first quarter, about double market expectations, and sent its shares up 2.8 per cent to a record A$2.22. However the shares ended flat at A$2.16.
