Weak currency positive for Australian exporters

The Australian market is continuing to shed its reliance on the resource sector as telecoms, media and banking stocks come to the fore. Some six years ago around one third of the market consisted of mining companies but this weighting has now fallen to below 20%, according to Harvey Hammond, fund manager at Baillie Gifford. By contrast banks are 19.97% of the ASX index, media accounts for 16.6% and telecoms 10.8%. One of the reasons for the change in emphasis has been the privatisation of various companies, such as Telstra, a major telecoms provider in Australia, government owned until tw...