Afternoon day trading July 6

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares traded sideways following a mixed close on Wall Street overnight and amid flat trade across Asia.

The ASX 200 inched up four or 0.1% to 5767 as the financial sector fell 0.4%. The sector has come under pressure lately following the announcement of a federal levy and concerns about regulatory tightening to rein in a runaway property market.

"While we remain positive on the banking sector as a whole, we believe APRA is on the verge of introducing what should constitute 'unquestionably strong' capital requirements," Bell Potter analyst TS Lim told Fairfax. "These will probably provide some short term headwinds (more sentiment than anything else) and have far greater implications for the majors than the regionals."


Other pressures on the market today included telecoms -0.4% and energy -0.3%. The gold sector rallied 1.3%, IT 1.5% and health 1.2%.

US futures edged red following a mixed night after the minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting showed little agreement about the next step for the central bank. S&P 500 futures were lately down half a point or 0.02%. China's Shanghai Composite shed 0.07%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.14% and Japan's Nikkei 0.27%.

Crude oil futures rebounded 24 cents or 0.53% this morning to US$45.37 a barrel. Gold futures rallied $4.30 or 0.25% to US$1,226 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76 US cents.


House-keeping: looking for a volunteer to fill this slot (ie, launch the afternoon thread at 1pm EST each day) from tomorrow until a week on Monday. It's school holidays here in NSW and I'm off to Bleak City with the family until July 15. Any takers, please? Trading: hoped for a capitulation bounce in DRM but didn't get it.  Small dabble in ING, which is the kind of trade I sometimes take when I'm all out of better ideas.