Daytrading August 31 afternoon

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares slumped to a six-week low this morning following overnight declines in key commodities and weakness in the dollar.  

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 56 points or 1% lower at 5423 after earlier touching its weakest level since mid-July. The market looked set to end a lacklustre few weeks near its low for the month after July's strong rally gave way to uncertainty and a collapse in volatility. The S&P 500's trading range this month ranks among the lowest in 90 years, according to market strategist Ryan Detrick.

"How boring has Aug '16 been?" he tweeted "S&P 500 has traded in a range of 1.54% (based on closing prices). Since '28, only 6 months have been less. Wow."

Resource stocks bore the brunt of today's selling after forex traders drove the US dollar higher overnight following comments from Federal Reserve Vice-chair Stanley Fischer. The gold sector tumbled 3.9%, metals & mining 3.3%, materials 2.6% and energy 1.7%. The Australian dollar was lately buying 75.32 US cents.

China's Shanghai Composite fell 0.06%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.08% and Japan's Nikkei put on 0.78%. Dow futures were recently off two points or 0.01%.

Crude oil futures slid another eight cents or 0.17% this morning to US$46.27 a barrel. Gold futures firmed $1 or 0.08% to US$1,317.50 an ounce.


Goldies have copped a hiding this week. XGD is at a two-month low and seems to have broken its uptrend. Been a good run. Trading: struggled for ideas. Small dabble in GMN.