Thanks Oscar and morning crew. Half-time round-up: Wall Street's...

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Wall Street's best night since 2015 fulled a sharp rebound in Australian shares this morning.

The ASX 200 bounced 44 points or 0.8% to 5834, paring three days of losses since President Trump proposed a raft of new tariffs on Chinese imports. Overnight, the S&P 500 surged 2.72%, its strongest rise since August 2015, after US officials indicated negotiations were underway to avert a trade war.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said his team had held "very productive conversations" with China. “I’m cautiously hopeful we reach an agreement,” he said. Read more here.

The optimistic turn to trade talks lit a fire under US stocks following their worst week in two years. S&P 500 futures were recently up 11.5 points or 0.43%. Asian markets also caught the uplift. China's Shanghai Composite rallied 1.06%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.16% and Japan's Nikkei 1.65%.

Here, industrials led the rebound with a gain of 1.5%. The health sector added 1.2%, materials 1.1% and financials 0.4%. The gold sector gave up 0.6%.

Crude oil futures gained 15 cents or 0.23% this morning to US$65.70 a barrel. Gold futures shed $2.40 or 0.15% to US$1,358.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 77.4 US cents.



Index traders should be having fun with these wild swings. Big money to be made if you get it right. Obviously the reverse also holds true. Trading: first dabble at COB on pullback. Probably a day early. Looks like a single institutional seller, but volumes are modest - so far, at least. Bounce, damn you.