daytrades march 29 afternoon

Thanks Barnsty. Half-time round-up:

Weak overnight resource prices weighed on local shares during a soft morning for regional markets.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was little changed for a second day, up 5 points or 0.1% at 4739 as gains in the big banks, Telstra, consumer stocks and industrials countered falls among miners, small caps and property trusts.

"The markets are looking for where the momentum will come from," Martin Lakos, director at Macquarie Private Wealth, told Fairfax. "It's probably going to have to come from earnings, so there has to be confidence as to earnings recovery. The oil price [and] Japanese earthquake and nuclear situation - providing it doesn't escalate to a worse position - is now factored in."

The dollar pulled back from another new overnight high, trading recently at US $1.024, around three-quarters of a cent lower than yesterday evening's high of US $1.0315.

In domestic economic news, new house sales picked up last month but units and town-houses declined. House sales rose 1.5% during the month. Sales of units/town-houses dropped by 7.6%.

Japan's Nikkei dropped another 1.45% this morning, Shanghai 0.33% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.05%. Dow futures were recently at +12.

Crude oil futures eased 17 cents this morning to $103.60 a barrel. Spot gold was $1.10 weaker at $1,418.90 an ounce.


Trading volumes are pitiful at the moment - close to Christmas holiday levels. Suggests considerable uncertainty about where the market goes from here. Seems odd because normally we would expect some end-of-quarter window dressing from the big institutional traders. These low-volume sessions encourage me to take more marginal trades than usual and consequently my win:loss ratio is suffering. I had dabbles in UNX and BLR this morning but volumes are tediously low. Bounce scalps completed in THR and EGO. Also grabbed a few MOY.