Shares traded little changed in a shortened session on the Australian Stock Exchange despite stronger iron ore prices and as Wall Street ended softer. Shares have gained in the previous nine sessions. 
Shortly after the open at 10:15am AEDT, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 0.34 of a point, or 0.01 per cent, at 5319.6. while the broader All Ordinaries index was down 1.8 points, or 0.03 per cent, at 5,364.6.
In the first minutes of trading, the biggest gains were made by Monadelphous Group, up 2.3 per cent, and Domino's Pizza Enterprises, which rose 2.8 per cent. Nine Entertainment was up 1.9 per cent. 
Among the biggest decliners were Liquefied Natural Gas, down 6.8 per cent, and Beach Energy, which shed 4 per cent. News Corp lost 2.2 per cent.
Overnight, the price of iron ore delivered to the Chinese port of Qingdao rose 2.6 per cent to $US43.42 a tonne. That didn't, however, seem to affect the big miners. At 10:40am AEDT, BHP Billiton shares were down 1.4 per cent and Rio Tinto's shares were off 0.9 per cent.
With the exception of Commonwealth Bank, up 0.04 per cent, the other big banks traded lower, including Westpac, down 0.7 per cent, ANZ, down 0.6 per cent and NAB, which was off 0.4 per cent.
The ASX closes in a shortened session on Thursday at 2:30pm AEDT.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average finished 0.66 per cent weaker at 17,603.87 points and the S&P 500 lost 0.72 per cent to 2,063.36. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.82 per cent to 5,065.85.
Overseas, traders sentiment may have been hurt by comments from International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, who in an interview with a German newspaper, said global economic growth would disappoint in 2016, adding that outlook for the medium-term had also deteriorated.