Shares hit a ten-week low before turning positive as key Asian markets rebounded despite further selling in risk assets and buying in traditional havens.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 23 points or 0.45% higher at 5136 after earlier falling as low as 5051 in the first half hour of trade as post-Brexit jitters continued. The turnaround came as Chinese and Japanese markets rallied alongside gold, the greenback and treasuries, while US equity futures, crude oil and the Australian dollar declined.
The Shanghai Composite was lately up 0.66% and Japan's Nikkei 1.67%. Gold for August delivery advanced $7.70 or 0.6% to US$1,330.10 an ounce. The US dollar index was up 0.4%, helping push the Aussie down almost 1% to 73.98 US cents.
Dow futures slumped 94 points or 0.55%. S&P 500 futures were off 11 points or 0.55%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng declined 0.98%. Crude oil futures were down 29 cents or 0.6% at US$47.35 a barrel.
“It’s going to be a very tough week,” James Audiss, senior investment adviser at Shaw and Partners, told Bloomberg. “Unless an investor has a really strong view one way or the other, you’d be brave to buy in. It will be a really volatile week and people are scared to position into things.”
In Australia, losses in IT -1.3% and financials -0.9% were outweighed by gains in resource stocks and traditional defensives. Telecoms put on 2.8%, metals & mining 2.3%, utilities 2.1% and gold 0.95%.
I've given more detail than usual, because the smarties will draw their own conclusions from the moves in all these different assets. Definite defensive bias to the gains, but no armageddon. Slightly surprised we're ahead, given those US futures, but you could argue that crude is off its low and gold off its high, so... Trading: one of those happy mornings where the early weakness offered good entries and you've locked away a decent wage by 10.30am. Nice wins in RAP and CYB. Also scored in PIO, MDR and ACW.
