Daytrading June 10 afternoon

Thanks Endless. Thanks also thumbers, and MadMin for passing on details of this morning's posting hiccup. Here goes with the second attempt:

Half-time round-up:

Australian shares pared a second day of gains following news of a sharp drop in job ads, an acceleration in Chinese inflation and profit warnings from Pacific Brands and The Reject Shop.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was trading 16 points or 0.3% higher at 5480 after earlier running as high as 5496. Solid gains in financials +0.7%, telecoms +0.7% and property trusts +0.4% helped offset falls in retail stocks, health -1.3% and the Small Ords -0.2%.

Job advertising shrank last month for the first time in five months as the federal budget dented consumer confidence. The total number of ads declined 5.6%, according to ANZ’s monthly survey. The result raised questions about the likely strength of Thursday's monthly jobs update.

"The key question now is whether the fall in job ads is largely temporary,” ANZ Senior economist, Justin Fabo, told Fairfax. “If it isn’t, this will be a risk to our forecast that labour demand will improve slowly this year amid modestly better economic conditions... The survey measures where the trend is going. We know that in recent times there has been a pretty clear softening in a few indicators and we are seeing this today with these figures."

Business confidence was resilient last month, despite sagging consumer confidence. NAB’s business confidence gauge was unchanged at +7. Home loans were steady during April.

Asian markets were mixed following news that Chinese consumer inflation increased more than expected last month. The Consumer Price Index rose to 2.5% from 1.8% the previous month. Economists had expected a reading of 2.4%. China's Shanghai Composite edged up 0.06%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.04% and Japan's Nikkei retreated 0.44%. Dow futures were recently down 11 points or less than 0.1%.

Crude oil futures were trading at US$104.71 a barrel. Spot gold was at US$1,253.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 93.57 US cents.



Hope this has posted okay. There will be kinks to work through this week, but generally the new site does not seem too different from the old dog we knew and loved. Just got to get used to a few eccentricities. I'm staying away from that 'Preview' button... Trading: good to have a positive start to a short week, even if the rally has tailed off a bit. I closed out a bungled entry in PTM from last week and spent the rest of the morning buying dips in LNG and selling into the mild bounces. Did that three times for a solid wage. SGQ looks to be building a bottom. I hold.