Afternoon trading Jan 15

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    Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


    Half-time round-up:

    Australian shares struggled to hold gains ahead of tonight's US public holiday, even as a regional index hit record levels.

    While MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares rallied to an all-time high this morning, the ASX 200 surrendered most of an early 34-point charge to reach the midpoint of the session ahead just six points or 0.1% at 6076. Caution set in ahead of tonight's Martin Luther King Jr public holiday in the US, which is expected to subdue Asian action until Wednesday local time.

    Ebullient US equity futures failed to encourage local traders to stay the course. Dow futures were recently up 103 points or 0.4% following another round of record closes on the major US indices on Friday. Here, gains in gold stocks +3.3%, metals & mining +1.2% and health +0.4% were capped by declines in telecoms -0.7%, IT -0.6% and energy -0.5%.

    Hong Kong's Hang Seng improved 0.7% and Japan's Nikkei 0.32%. China's Shanghai Composite slid 0.41%.

    Crude oil futures edged up eight cents or 0.12% this morning to US$64.38 a barrel. Gold futures gained $4.30 or 0.32% to US$1,339.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying 79.34 US cents.


    ASX seems soft lately. The XJO looks like closing below its opening price for the fifth session in a row. Tonight's US holiday certainly does not help. Likely to be a dampener tomorrow as well. Pity - XJO is back at a level where we might reasonably expect a rebound. Trading: caught bounces in LNU and CKA for a solid, not exciting, start to the week.
 
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