Afternoon trading April 9

Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1 and morning crew.

Half-time wrap:

Australian shares rose for a second day as rebounds in iron ore, copper and lithium lifted miners.

The ASX 200 rallied 35 points or 0.45% by mid-session. Rio Tinto, South32 and BHP led the charge of the heavyweights. Stand-outs in the green metals space included Liontown Resources, Lynas Rare Earths and Arcadium Lithium.

The morning's economic news showed consumers lost confidence in the economic outlook, while business conditions and confidence were little changed. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute Australia Consumer Confidence index dropped 2.4% this month to 82.4 points. NAB's index of business conditions eased one point to +9, while business confidence lifted one point to +1.

Wall Street started the week in neutral with the major indices closing mixed but barely changed overnight ahead of inflation figures and trading updates from several major banks later in the week. The S&P 500 eased 0.04%.


Personal trading: Most days are about making money, but now and then you find yourself playing defence where the object is to lose as little as possible. PEC hasn't played out as hoped, so I took the hit. Got another one trading perilously close to my stop-loss.