Afternoon trading Dec 15

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares surrendered most of their gains for the week as a negative lead from Wall Street dragged on the local market.

The ASX 200 slipped 15 points or 0.25% to 5996, just above the 5994 level where the benchmark index began the week. The big banks did most of the damage, with the financials sector falling 0.7%. Also weak: utilities -0.3%, health -0.2% and materials -0.1%. Bucking the trend were IT +0.5%, industrials +0.5% and telecoms +0.3%.

Overnight the S&P 500 lost 0.41% amid concerns that a Republican tax plan faces further obstacles before becoming law. S&P 500 futures were recently down 1.5 points or 0.06%. China's Shanghai Composite dropped 0.6%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.01% and Japan's Nikkei 0.82%.

Crude oil futures put on seven cents or 0.12% this morning to US$57.11 a barrel. Gold futures shed $1 or 0.08% to US$1,256 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.68 US cents.


Well done if you turned a coin this morning. From where I'm sitting, today feels like the first day of the Xmas slowdown. I have around a hundred price alerts set on potential trades, so normally the PC chimes away all morning. Today I went an hour without hearing a ding. Ah well - it's been a good run.