Australia Stocks Meander, With Banks Up But Iron Miners Sinking

Australian stocks seesawed in early Friday trading, meandering between small gains and losses as strength in the financial shares counterbalanced losses for some of the major miners. The S&P/ASX 200 was little changed about 30 minutes into the trading day, with a modestly positive lead from the U.S. markets offering some support in Sydney for the heavily weighted financial stocks. Among them, Commonwealth Bank of Australia rose 0.4%, Macquarie Group Ltd. bounded 1.2% higher, and regional lender Bendigo & Adelaide Bank Ltd. added 0.7%. But the key iron-ore stocks led the mining sector lower after spot iron-ore prices fell below US$60-per-metric-ton overnight, as the commodity market reacted further to China setting a lower economic growth target for this year. Decliners included Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. (down 3.9%), Arrium Ltd. (down 4.9%) amd Atlas Iron Ltd. (down 8.6%), as well as senior miners BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Ltd. , down 1.4% and 1.2%, respectively. Comex gold futures' drop below the $1,200-a-troy-ounce level had a similar effect on the gold miners, with Newcrest Mining Ltd. down 1.8%, and Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd. down 3.2%. Fellow gold extractor St. Barbara Ltd. managed to rally 4.8% for reasons that weren't immediately clear -- the only major news item from the company was the announcement that a worker had been killed during tree clearing for one of the company's Papua New Guinea projects, prompting a halt to work there while an investigation is conducted. Still, reports predicted range-bound trading for the Australian session, as investors awaited the monthly U.S. jobs report, due later in the global day.