Afternoon trading August 14

Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1 and morning crew.

Half-time wrap:

The share market started the week in retreat following declines in Asia, a mixed batch of corporate earnings and back-to-back weekly losses for two of Wall Street's three major benchmarks.

The ASX 200 dropped 60 points or 0.81% by mid-session. Gains in energy producers, gold miners and telcos were comprehensively outweighed by declines across the wider market.

The market rewarded trading updates from Carsales.com, JB Hi-Fi and GPT Group and punished reports from Beach Energy, Lendlease, Aurizon, Ansell and Bendigo & Adelaide Bank.

Buying interest was dampened by solid falls on Asian markets and a soft end to a challenging week in the US. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index sank 2.3% after another shoe dropped in a rolling real estate crisis in China. The Shanghai Composite gave up almost 1%.

On Friday, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq added to falls earlier in the week with declines of 0.11% and 0.68%, respectively. The Dow outperformed with a gain of 0.3%.

Personal trading: Caught the retrace in MGA for some shekels. Also a couple of pips from a part-fill at the low in SLZ.