The Australian stock market has closed lower today with energy and gold stocks hit hardest.

Fat Prophets director Angus Geddes said the heaviest selling today had been in the oil and gas stocks and gold stocks after a drop in oil and gold prices overnight.

But Mr Geddes said there were signs of profit taking across the board and even companies that had posted solid earnings were being sold off.

At the 1615 AEDT close the S&P/ASX200 was down 14.4 points to 4820.6 while the all ordinaries had dropped 14.6 to 4766.9.

On the Sydney Futures Exchange the March share price index contract had fallen 21 points to 4788 on volume of 15,433.

The weakness on the local bourse came despite a positive lead from the US where stocks ended higher overnight as crude oil prices fell below US$58 a barrel.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 30.58 points to 11,058.97 while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index firmed 4.47 points to 1280.00.

Tech stocks also made gains with the Nasdaq Composite Index rising 14.26 points to 2276.43.

Lower commodity prices on the London Metals Exchange drove down the diversified miners in early trade but Rio Tinto rallied in the afternoon to close up five cents at $71.89.

The world's biggest miner BHP Billiton finished down six cents at $24.29, despite posting an Australian record interim profit of US$4.36 billion (A$5.88 billion) yesterday.

Oil and gas stocks sank with Woodside Petroleum down 51 cents to $39.70, Santos dropping 10 cents to $11.80 and Oil Search slipping 13 cents to $3.37.

Three of the four big banks defied the market gloom with the Commonwealth Bank climbing 15 cents to $44.13, National Australia Bank up 13 cents to $35.50, ANZ rising 14 cents to $24.85 and only Westpac falling 11 cents to $23.13.

Investment banks lost ground with Macquarie slipping $2.05 to $59.85 and Babcock & Brown down 14 cents to $16.01.

AMP Ltd fell 26 cents to $8.36 after the financial services group posted a seven per cent fall in net profit to $809 million for the 2005 calendar year.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp rose 13 cents to $22.93 but the non-voting stock eased two cents to $21.68.

Property group Lend Lease closed down 60 cents at $13.65 after posting a half year net profit of $176.6 million.

Qantas slipped nine cents to $3.96 after the airline reported a 9.6 per cent fall in interim net profit to $352.6 million.

And printer and magazine distributor PMP Ltd tumbled eight cents to $1.535 after posting a 44 per cent fall in first half net profit to $18.4 million.

Food Group Burns Philp also lost ground in the wake of a profit announcement, slipping one cent to $1.07 after announcing a 37 per cent dip in first half profit.

Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group gained five cents to $5.63 after boosting its half year profit to $32.5 million.

Retail stocks were mixed with Woolworths advancing 15 cents to $17.50 while supermarket rival Coles Myer dropped 10 cents to $10.06.

At 1653 AEDT the spot price of gold in Sydney was US$537.75 per fine ounce, down US$9.00 on last night's close.

Gold stocks went backwards with Newcrest Mining dropping 31 cents to $23.67 and Lihir Gold tripping down 6.5 cents to $1.98.5.

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