MONTHLY SUMMARY - Equities Desk

Economy and Indices

The AU market has fallen over the last month, in context with the world markets.

Leading Sectors This Month

Health Care, Property and Energy are all around +0.0% for the month.

Interestingly Health Care was the top performer last month, while Energy has lost 20% over the last two months, and property has been a laggard too. This shows the resilience of the market-leading Health Care companies.

Bottom Sectors

1. Telcos -8%

2. A large portion of the sectors are -4% for the month.

Segments this Month

Mid-Cap Resources are leading the market with steady returns for the month.

The remainder of the market has fallen and with mid and small cap industrials hit the hardest. This movement is consistent with times of rapidly falling markets and is known as the ‘Margin Call Selling’.

Market Trends

Disruption from the depths – that has been the standout theme from top performing companies in 2018 thus far.

From A2 Milk (A2M) carving out their own market niche through to software designer Altium (ALU). The majority of top performing share on the ASX for 2018 have forced their way to the top through innovation and changing the status quo in their industry.

The only exceptions have been CSL, the blood products and health-care leader and travel companies (FLT, WEB, CTD and QAN)

Market Leaders

Agriculture, Gold miners, selective miners (cobalt, lithium etc) and Technology are still leading. Notably Mining Services, a long-term performer seems to have fallen from the leading group.

For discussion of these leaders see the latest episode of Talking Stock.

Podcasts:

I regularly interview industry exports on numerous topics available in the Podcast playlist here

1. To view the whole panel discussion I moderated last month click here, or highlights here

2. For an alternative view on BHP watch the Torpedo Tuesday interview Hugh Dive;

3. Timing and trading points for the US markets and AU markets see the slides and audio with Gary Glover and his charts.

4. For an insight into reducing risk in a portfolio by thinking about companies differently watch my interview here

5. A polarising view of the AU markets, their lagging performance and the top performing companies see the discussion with Rudi Filapek-Vandyk in our new The Unfair Advantage