Afternoon trading June 8

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares marked time as soft overnight leads from the US and a looming long weekend dampened buyer appetite.

The ASX 200 pared two days of gains with a mid-session deficit of three points or 0.1% at 6054. A mixed market saw gains in consumer staples +0.4%, utilities +0.3% and energy +0.3% outweighed by declines in gold stocks -1%, industrials -0.8% and metals & mining -0.5%. The financial sector was unchanged.

The mood in Asia was downbeat ahead of a meeting of world leaders at the G7 this weekend. China's Shanghai Composite eased 0.97%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.08% and Japan's Nikkei 0.1%. US stocks closed mixed overnight, with a 0.38% rise in the Dow balanced by losses of 0.07% and 0.7% in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. S&P 500 futures were recently down 0.75 points or 0.03%.

“Uncertainly ahead of the weekend’s G7 meeting led to a downturn in risk appetite throughout the US session,” Nick Twidale, analyst at Racketing Securities Australia, told Reuters. “Risk trades were lower across the board in the currency markets... We saw more volatility in the emerging markets.”

Crude oil futures edged up another 12 cents or 0.18% this morning to US$66.07 a barrel. Gold futures slid $2.10 or 0.16% to US$1,300.90 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.17 US cents.



Nothing like a long weekend to put a dampener on what was already tepid spec interest. Let's hope things pick up next week. G7 could be the trigger for a significant move one way or the other. Trading: scraped a part-wage out of SCU at 2.9c. Let a few other half-chances go through to the keeper.

Enjoy the long weekend, all.