daytrading feb 3 afternoon

Thanks Endless.

Half-time round-up:

A rebound in Australian shares stuttered this morning after a hat-trick of deteriorating economic signals from China and at home.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 18 points or nearly 0.4% in the red at 5171 after running as high as 5198 before the economic news dampened buyer enthusiasm. Gold +0.5%, utilities +0.3% and property trusts +0.3% were the best of the sectors and financials -0.6%, metals & mining -0.5% and industrials -0.3% the worst.

The January Chinese services activity report continued the recent trend towards deteriorating data. The non-services purchasing managers' index fell to 53.4 last month from 54.6 in December. The reading was the lowest in the index's three-year history. Read more here.

At home, building approvals declined for a third straight month in December. Approvals dropped 2.9%, versus expectations for a fall of 0.3% after strong growth last year. Job ads reduced by 0.3% in January, following a loss of 0.7% the previous month.

Japan's Nikkei lost 1.59% this morning. China's Shanghai Composite and Hong Kong's Hang Seng were closed for Lunar New Year holidays. Dow futures were recently up eight points or less than 0.1%.

Crude oil futures slumped 57 cents this morning to US$96.85 a barrel. Spot gold was $1.70 weaker at US$1,244.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying 98.65 US cents.


Market definitely looks interested in taking a stand here - XJO keeps bouncing off the 5160/65 area. Real tussle going on between bulls and bears, with cyclicals sold this morning and defensives stemming the losses. Pretty hard yakka finding day trades in these conditions. Spec market has stalled and the big end is grinding lower without offering much in the way of intraday bounces. I took a couple of intraday speculators in IDC and UNX to little reward so far.