Afternoon trading February 1

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

A mixed finish to Wall Street's best January in three decades kept a lid on Australian shares this morning. 

The ASX 200 faded to a mid-session loss of five points or 0.1% at 5860 as the big banks weighed on the index for a fourth session. On the second-last trading session before the government reveals the recommendations from the Royal Commission into finance on Monday night, the financial sector dipped 0.4%. Energy stocks dropped 0.*% and telecoms 0.4%.

Utilities were the pick of the sectors, adding 1.2%. Also strong: I.T. +0.6%, gold +0.4% and industrials +0.4%.

Overnight, US stocks closed out their best start to a year since 1987. The S&P 500 put on 0.86% during the session to end 7.9% ahead for the month. The Dow eased 0.06% on the night but ahead 7.1% for the month. The rallies reversed much of the market's heavy fall during December.

"We're close to fair value," Dave Lafferty, chief market strategist at Natixis Investment Managers in the US, told CNBC. "It feels like a lot of this was a pop from fairly oversold levels in the fourth quarter. The market sort of ran away with itself to the downside and it's come back."

Asian markets saw muted gains. China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.43%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.27% andJapan's Nikkei 0.17%. S&P 500 futures were recently down two points or 0.07%.

Crude oil futures improved 15 cents or 0.28% this morning to $US53.94 a barrel. Gold futures dipped $1.30 or 0.1% to $US1,323.90 an ounce. The dollar was buying 72.45 US cents.

 

 

A new month already? Strewth. Didn't January fly by. Best opening month in the US since 1987. Best not think about what happened next. Trading: doing a few more overnight holds now market sentiment has improved. Took IME in yesterday's arvo dump and locked in the profit this morning. Dipped a toe in ETE at 1,4c. Buy order in for OOK.