The Australian market suffered declines from the opening today, despite a positive lead from the US market from Friday night. Seems it could be reacting to events in the Middle East over the weekend. The XJO attempted to recover through the middle of the day and looked like rejecting the early weakness. The last hour of trade, however, carried on the morning theme and diluted the early afternoon gains. The end result for the XJO was a decline of 36.7 points or 0.7%. The Information Technology, Materials and the Metals/Mining sectors were the poor performers, down 1.5%, 1.1% and 1.2% respectively. Gold was the strongest sector, up 1.5%. The Telecommunications sector shows a decline of 5.1% but this was due to Telstra going ex dividend today. It closed down 5.4% after a dividend of $0.14. The US market is closed tonight as they observe Washington’s birthday or President’s day as it is also known.