Afternoon trading March 29

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The share market drifted towards a third straight losing month and its lowest close since October as traders reduced positions before the long weekend.

The ASX 200 declined 18 points or 0.3% to 5771 on the last trading day of a downbeat month. The benchmark index has fallen more than 200 points during March and is now more than 350 points off its January peak.  

This morning, modest gains in financials +0.15% and utilities +0.1% were outweighed by falls in gold -1.2%, metals & mining -1.1% and IT -1.1%.

Overnight, US stocks traded either side of break-even before the S&P 500 faded to a loss of 0.29%. S&P 500 futures were recently off 1.5 points or 0.06%.

“We’ve done some damage with the correction and it’s going to take some time to repair,” Bob Doll, portfolio manager and chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management in the US, told Bloomberg. “Expect choppy, sideways volatility.”

Asian markets were mixed. China's Shanghai Composite edged up 0.1%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng dipped 0.09% and Japan's Nikkei put on 0.86%.

Crude oil futures recouped 27 cents or 0.42% this morning to US$64.65 a barrel. Gold futures added $1.90 or 0.14% to US$1,331.90 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.48 US cents.



No surprise to see further weakness here considering the prevailing conditions and the fact Wall Street will trade twice before we re-open on Tuesday (they take the Good Friday holiday, but not Easter Monday). In this volatile environment a lot could happen between now and then. Trading: had the Midas touch yesterday but slipped back into my clown shoes for today. Tend to make my worst trading decisions when conditions are slow. Stumbled into MTH before the initial selling had washed through and consequently appear well positioned to give back some of yesterday's gains. A dumb trade delivering what it deserves. Good time to take a break.