Thanks Oscar and morning crew. Apologies for Friday's no-show - sheesh, what a wedding. A Scottish drunk made a fool of himself at the bar. Oh wait - that was me...
Half-time round-up:
Shares gave up two days of gains before paring losses as traders picked up resource stocks and select havens.
The ASX 200 slumped 35 points in early action but reduced that loss to 16 points or 0.3% at 5941 by the halfway mark. A mixed market saw falls in utilities -1.9%, industrials -0.6% and financials -0.5% partly offset by rallies in energy +0.6%, gold +0.6%, telecoms +0.4% and metals & mining +0.2%.
Today's decline followed a negative close on Wall Street on Friday amid continuing concerns about President Trump's ability to push through plans for corporate tax cuts. While the House of Representatives passed a tax bill on Friday, the Senate is working on a different version. The S&P 500 lost 0.26%. This morning S&P 500 futures were off 1.5 points or 0.06%.
"There'll be plenty of time to digest the plan, if it actually does turn into some mode of enactment," Jim Lowell, CIO at Adviser Investments, told CNBC. "There'll also be plenty of time to figure out how to maneuver as the revisions go forward. But I would definitely advise investors to not make any investment move today based on the fact that they don't know how this tax reform plan is going to play out."
A red morning in Asia saw China's Shanghai Composite dive 1.2%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng off 0.02% and Japan's Nikkei down 0.4%.
Crude oil futures ticked up eight cents or 0.14% this morning to US$56.63 a barrel. Gold futures retreated $4.50 or 0.35% to US$1,292 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.61 US cents.
Still a good, vigorous spec market. Plenty of opportunities to win or lose. I had wins this morning in FBR, RFN and CAN. Jury still out on GMV, TV2 and EYM.
