Afternoon trading August 14

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares shrugged off disappointing Chinese economic data to advance for the first time in three sessions as US equity futures flagged a positive start on Wall Street tonight.

The ASX 200 overcame a brief wobble to improve 41 points or 0.7% to 5734 as traders bought IT stocks +1.1%, financials +1%, consumer discretionary+0.7% and materials +0.7%. The local market took its cue from upbeat US futures after the weekend passed without further inflaming tensions between the US and North Korea. Dow futures were up 64 points or 0.29%. S&P 500 futures rallied 8.25 points or 0.34%.

"Geopolitics was the dominant theme last week and clearly enough reason for investors to increase cash allocations and look for portfolio protection," IG strategist Chris Weston told Fairfax. "However, it seems we have seen tensions over North Korea ease off a touch over the weekend."

China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.16% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.76% despite new of decelerating growth last month across industrial production, retail sales and investments. All three activity gauges fell short of expectations. Read more here. Japan's Nikkei declined 1%.

Crude oil futures dipped six cents or 0.12% this morning to US$48.76 a barrel. Gold futures faded 50 cents or 0.04% to US$1,293.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 79.08 US cents.


Wall Street's hyperactive attention span has moved on from last week's woes - North Korea is so last Thursday. The Chinese figures this morning were pretty cruddy, but the ASX doesn't seem to give a fig. Trading: not my sort of session. Took almost an hour for any of my 100 price alerts to trigger and by then I was almost comatose on the desk after a sleepless weekend involving a visiting dog, visiting mother-in-law and incontinent son. May have to get a hotel room.