daytrades august 20 afternoon

Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:

The local share market is on track for a second weekly loss after regional markets tracked Wall Street lower this morning.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 51 points or 1.1% at 4427 as all sectors bar gold and IT lost ground. Hardest hit was the telecoms sector, down 1.5% as Telstra was sold off on pre-election jitters over the fate of the national broadband network.

The financial sector was 1.3% weaker despite ANZ reporting a 26% rise in profit over the nine months to the end of June. Shares in ANZ rallied more than 1% against the general trend this morning.

Election uncertainty has dampened interest in Australian equities among overseas investors, according to the head of equities at UBS's Australian operation. Gary Head said the proposed mining tax had raised concerns about government intervention.

"It's been getting more and more difficult to encourage international clients to look at Australian equities as an attractive asset class because of the political risk, the sovereign risk," Mr Head told Fairfax websites. "They don't want to be in a place where the rules change or the taxes change, compared with what they expected."

Asian markets retreated. Japan's Nikkei was off 1.15%, Shanghai 0.92% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.29%. Dow futures were recently at +5%.

Crude oil futures recovered 13 cents this morning to $74.44 a barrel. The spot gold price was $1.30 softer at $1,230.90 an ounce. The Aussie dollar was buying 89.18 U.S. cents.


Perhaps not as ugly a morning as expected and certainly not as much volatility as hoped. Just two trades here: rode BBG from early on and bought MRM at support. Moved a buy order in CDU at the last minute and cheated myself out of a nice profit. Fortune favours the brave - and scoffs at wusses...