After the end of the Christmas break, the Australian markets opened to close flat. The reasons for the same have been thin trading volumes and also negative response of the mining companies to the rate hike in China.

At the end of the trading day, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 Index ended lower by 2.1 points or 0.04 per cent to be at 4775.2. On the other hand, the All Ordinaries Index went up to be up by 3.3 per cent or 0.07 per cent.

For the March share price futures index, the day ended in the red zone to be down by 9 points at 4775. During the whole day some 9500 contracts were traded.

Sectoral performance showed that utilities, health and information technology were all in the black. It was 0.61, 0.55 and 0.31 per cent respectively.

But the worst performance was shown by mining companies who were impacted by the interest rate hike that took over the weekend in China. The big miners like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton pulled the markets down.

The almost nil movement in the currency also had its impact.