Aussie market recovers but finishes down

The Australian share market recovered from its heavier morning losses to finish only slightly down on Wednesday, with the speech by U.S. President Donald Trump not having much of an impact on the local market.

At the market close, the S&P/ASX200 index was down 7.4 points, or 0.13 percent, to 5704.8 points, while the larger All Ordinaries index was down 10.1 points, or 0.18 percent, to 5750.9 points.

There were some big movers in Wednesday's trade, with athlete tracking device company Catapult firing up in value, ahead 4.37 percent, worldwide retailer Harvey Norman struggled mightily, down 5.92 percent.

The banking sector had some mixed returns, with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia finishing up 0.44 percent, the National Australia Bank was flat for no gain, Westpac was up 0.39 percent, while ANZ had a modest raise, up 0.1 percent.

The miners couldn't dig themselves out of their early morning hole, with BHP Billiton losing 0.76 percent, Rio Tinto was down sharply, 1.10 percent, Fortescue backslid, down 0.53 percent, and Newcrest had a bad day of trade, down 1.49 percent.

The price of oil rising 0.15 percent to 54.09 U.S. dollars a barrel (at 1620 local time AEDT) wasn't enough to help the oil and gas companies, with Santos down 2.37 percent, Oil Search also did poorly, down 1.15 percent, while Woodside Petroleum fell a huge 1.66 percent in trade on Wednesday.

Grocery giant Woolworths were hit with a 1.09 percent loss, while their rival Wesfarmers scraped through today's trade with a minor 0.02 percent gain.

Biotech firm CSL reversed a bad start to score a 0.12 percent gain, airline Qantas didn't fare as well, down 0.4 percent, while telco giant Telstra dropped out heavily into the red, with a drop of 3.84 percent on Wednesday.

At 1633 local time AEDT, one Australian dollar buys 76.57 U.S. cents. Endit