Sydney - Australian stocks ended a topsy-turvy session marginally lower Thursday despite the news that the US Senate had approved a bail-out package for Wall Street.

The ASX200 slipped 33 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 4,761.

"Resources had a great rally yesterday, and they are giving back some of those gains today with BHP Billiton down and Rio Tinto down 4 per cent," analyst James Waggett of Bell Potter Securities said Thursday.

BHP Billiton Ltd rose more than 12 per cent Wednesday on the announcement from Australia's competition watchdog that its proposed acquisition of rival mining company Rio Tinto Ltd would not be blocked.

Rio managing director Tom Albanese is still insisting that the hostile all-scrip bid undervalues his company and that it is already strong enough to overcome the credit crisis.

"The fact is that Rio Tinto has no need to be bigger just for bigger's sake," he said. "We have the scale, we have the strength and we have the resilience to weather this sort of storm easily on our own." (dpa)