daytrades oct 15 afternoon

Thanks Endless. Onya mate. Half-time round-up:

Australian shares look like ending a choppy week where they began after a morning of modest falls.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 23 points or 0.5% at 4675, just six points below last Friday's closing price. All sectors bar health and telecoms were trading lower, with falls heaviest in gold -1.5%, IT -1.4% and utilities -1.1%.

"The banks are retreating after yesterday's strong gains, and we're also seeing some mixed results on the resources sector on the back of those mixed commodity prices overnight," Macquarie Private Wealth adviser Helen Spencer told Fairfax. "It's not surprising at all to see a bit of a breather here this morning, and I think all eyes will be on how Asia performs this afternoon to influence how we close the day."

The dollar was buying 99.03 U.S. cents after "doing a Bradman" overnight: touching 99.94 cents, which coincidentally is the great man's batting average. Market commentators predicted the dollar could reach parity as early as tonight if U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke uses a speech tonight to outline plans to stimulate the economy.

Asian markets followed Wall Street lower. Japan's Nikkei was off 0.76%, Shanghai 0.27% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.5%. Dow futures were recently at -13.

Crude oil futures were unchanged this morning at $82.78 a barrel. The spot gold price eased $1 to $1,378.40 an ounce.


Been a sluggish morning, as others have noted. A lot of the recent shooting stars are falling to earth. I took a punt on 12.5 being the intraday low for AVB. So far, so good but I'll wait for a clear reversal signal before looking for anything more than a scalp. ABC has been good for a couple of points each morning recently - managed five today. Also had a wafer-thin scalp in NFE.