Afternoon trading August 31

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

A strong week for shares looked set to end on a weak note as global trade fears re-emerged and Argentina lurched towards crisis.

The ASX 200 retreated 17 points or 0.3% to 6335, paring the index's weekly gain to just under 100 points. The benchmark index set a new ten-year high yesterday after rebounding strongly from last week's change of Prime Minister.

Overnight, US and European markets fell back as Argentina teetered towards another default and President Trump reportedly backed more tariffs on Chinese imports. Argentina's central bank hiked its key rate 15 basis points to 60% in a bid to defend the collapsing peso amid runaway inflation. The government requested early access to an IMF loan. Read more here.

"Trade tensions were reinflamed during yesterday’s Asian session and then again overnight, with US President Trump first accusing the Chinese of undermining the process of North Korean de-nuclearisation talks, as well as suggesting his administration was ready to power ahead with its proposed tariffs," IG Markets' Kyle Rodda told Fairfax. "Talk of emerging market crises re-emerged last night, after the Argentine Peso collapsed despite that country’s central bank hiking interest rates to 60 per cent."

The S&P 500 fell 0.44%. This morning, China's Shanghai Composite dropped 0.49%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.13% and Japan's Nikkei 0.17%. S&P 500 futures were recently off 2.5 points or 0.09%.

Back home, the biggest losers were telecoms -3.8%, metals & mining -1.3% and gold stocks -0.7%. The health sector added 0.7% and industrials and financials 0.1%.

Crude oil futures eased a cent or 0.01% this morning to US$70.24 a barrel. Gold futures rose $3.10 or 0.26% to US$1,208.10 an ounce. The dollar was buying 72.47 US cents.



Trading: another empty Friday. Sigh. 9SP was my sort of trade but I swung and missed, then waited for a retrace that never came. Oh well. Been a good week until today.