daytrading june 24 afternoon

Thanks Gttrain. Greatly saddened to read about Andiver - thanks Giz for sharing.

Half-time round-up:

Australian shares this morning lurched towards their lowest close of the year after a profit warning from AMP compounded heavy selling among resource stocks and weakness across Asian markets.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 63 points or 1.3% weaker at 4676, well below the 2013 closing low of 4690 set on January 8. At +0.9%, health was the only sector to rally as the carnage continued among gold stocks -7%, metals & mining -3.3% and energy -2.7%. Property trusts lost 2.5% as a wave of companies traded ex-dividend. Financials dipped 1% after AMP downgraded first-half profit expectations.

The Shanghai Composite plunged near the psychologically- significant 2,000 level as fears of a cash squeeze continued to roil the market. The Composite was lately down 2.54% at 2,020. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was off 1.39% and Japan's Nikkei near break-even at -0.02%. Dow futures were 42 points or 0.3% in the red.

"Volatility is going to be the order of the week for the markets," the head of content and research at OCBC Bank in Singapore told Fairfax. "China has had a credit binge for way too long. The government is trying to re-balance the economy, trying to downsize the shadow banking system. All that means credit is going to remain fairly tight."

Crude oil futures dived 35 cents this morning to US$93.60 a barrel. Spot gold was $7.50 weaker at US$1,291.10 an ounce. The dollar was buying 92 US cents.


Will the last remaining gold share-holder please turn out the light when they've sold. The gold share index is now at a 10-year low and not a sniff of a bounce yet. Bottom picking is hazardous at the best of times, but harder still in this climate. How big an intraday fall is big enough? Like several others here, I fancied SIR, MML and BPT for bounces but only the latter has played along so far. I had earlier wins in MAH and AIO to relieve the pressure, but a decent day's wage is not yet guaranteed.