Afternoon trading March 26

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares slumped to a six-month low this morning following Wall Street's worst week in two years.

The ASX 200 fell 31 points or 0.5% to 5790 by the halfway mark of the session and needed to recover 5821 to avert its weakest close since mid-October. The big banks led the retreat, dragging the financials sector down 0.9%. Consumer staples lost 0.7%, telecoms 0.6% and materials 0.3%. Gold and energy stocks bucked the downtrend with rises of 1.9% and 0.3%, respectively.

The rout followed a second straight night of heavy losses on Wall Street on Friday as investors fretted about the prospect of a global trade war. The s&P 500 dived 2.1% to end the week with a five-session loss of 6%. Futures this morning showed tentative signs of a possible rebound tonight. S&P 500 futures were recently up 12.75 points or 0.49%.

"The US session ended up a painful extension on a threatening bear trend," an IG Markets analyst told Fairfax. "Depending on how you are marking your trend lines (through tails or at their extremes), benchmarks like the Dow 30 and S&P 500 stand on the cusp of critical reversals or have tentatively pushed to the other side. For scale of last week's pain, the S&P 500 closed out its worst week for losses since the start of 2016 and the second worst performance in six years of bull trend back to the late 2011 swoon."

Asian markets continued south. China's Shanghai Composite lost 1.67%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.52% and Japan's Nikkei 1.03%.

Crude oil futures edged up 16 cents or 0.24% this morning to US$66.04 a barrel. Gold futures dipped 70 cents or 0.05% to US$1,355 an ounce. The dollar was buying 77.21 US cents.



ASX losses are not as bad as expected due to hints of a rebound on Wall Street. Very important session ahead tonight for the S&P 500. If it doesn't hold this level, we're likely going a lot lower. Big rush into gold stocks here. Trading: had high hopes for a few cheap entries, but local investors seem sanguine about Friday's action. Got in near the low in JAT. Small pos in 3DP.