Afternoon trading September 13

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The share market retested its three-month closing low despite a strong morning for miners and Asian markets.

The ASX 200 was down 29 points or 0.5% to 6147 mid-session, erasing Tuesday's recovery and briefly trading below Monday's close of 6142, the index's weakest finish since mid-June. Gains in the metals & mining sector +1.5%, gold +1% and materials +1.1% were dwarfed by declines in utilities -1.7%, consumer staples -1.5% and financials -1.1%.

Asian markets were boosted by news the US was looking to launch fresh trade talks with China. Read more here. The Shanghai Composite rallied 0.28%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.43% and Japan's Nikkei 0.81%. S&P 500 futures were recently down 2.25 points or 0.08%. Overnight, the S&P 500 closed virtually flat at +0.04%.

Crude oil futures retreated 49 cents or 0.7% this morning to US$69.88 a barrel. Gold futures faded $1.10 or 0.1% to US$1,209.80 an ounce. The dollar was buying 71.83 US cents.



Trading: tricky market. Usual methods not delivering great returns at present. Got something out of ONX. Couple of other turkeys in the pen I'm eager to release into the wild, but the recoveries have been slow. Looks like I'm going to have to use patience - and I got into this game to avoid that, dammit.