Afternoon trading Jan 29

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares rallied for the third time in four sessions as strong gains in the US over the long weekend offset concerns about a soaring Australian dollar.

The ASX 200 advanced 30 points or 0.5% to 6080 by the halfway stage, led by gains in telecoms +1.5%, health stocks +1.4%. energy +1.2% and financials +0.6%. Gold stocks turned sharply lower, falling 2.3%, while the heavyweight metals & mining sector was unchanged.

The benchmark index has put on more than 80 points in four sessions since bottoming last week. Wall Street continued higher over the Australia Day long weekend, on Friday night delivering its best return since March. The S&P 500 put on 1.18% after President Trump soothed fears about the sliding greenback. S&P 500 futures were recently up three points or 0.1%.

Concerns about the impact on Australian exports of a stronger Australian dollar were heightened when the Aussie hit a three-and-a-half-year high last week. The dollar was this morning buying 80.96 US cents.

"The Australian economy does not welcome a stronger Australian dollar," James Athey at Aberdeen Standard Investments in the UK told Fairfax. "I expect commodity prices to moderate."


China's Shanghai Composite added 0.32%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.65% and Japan's Nikkei 0.51%.

Crude oil futures improved 20 cents or 0.3% this morning to US$66.34 a barrel. Gold futures faded $4.20 or 0.31% to US$1,353 an ounce.


Sluggish morning. Quite a few prangs at the spec end, as often happens towards the end of the quarterly reporting season. More to come in the next couple of days, I fear. Trading: bit too cautious this morning, as is often the way after a break. Should have had AEB and AB1. among others. Only buy was PNN, which has come a long way back towards potential support.