Laura Bessarati

March 2026.

So you need to take that with a grain of salt, the fact that it has improved.

We have seen materials post its ninth monthly improvement over the past 10 months.

It's one of the better performers this month as well.

But on the flip side, healthcare doing absolutely worst, down 8.5%.

That was largely due to that earnings downgrade from Cochlear, also CSL, and also consumer staples falling back unsurprisingly with everything going on.

Looking across the sectors today, though, we're seeing a similar story.

Most of the sectors are actually improving.

The materials sector is down 2.5%.

So that's really what's weighing on our market.

When you have your second biggest sector falling, that's really dragging things lower, even though most of the other sectors are improving.

Consumer staples also a very big drag down by 5%.

That's

really being dragged down by some of the supermarket giants, which we'll get to in just a moment.

But energy is one of the standouts today, unsurprisingly, with what's going on with oil prices.

Let's look at some company news from today.

So we have to talk about supermarket giant Woolies.

It's been in the spotlight, but not in a good way.

So its share price is slumping by roughly 8% after its third quarter trading update, flagging that the conflict in the Middle East is creating greater uncertainty for its customers, suppliers and also its teams at a time when, of course, cost of living pressures are already acute.

It said the impacts have been limited to date, but higher fuel costs and secondary effects are likely to have an increasing inflationary impact as we move through the calendar year.