Thanks Oscar and morning crew.
Half-time round-up:
Aussie shares hit a fresh six-month high this morning as gains in rate-sensitive stocks offset falling miners.
The ASX 200 advanced 21 points or 0.3% to 6267, the index's strongest point since early September. Yield sectors spearheaded the rally, telecoms rising 1%, utilities 0.9% and consumer staples 0.7%. That helped counter a 0.5% decline in metals & mining as market heavyweight Rio Tinto traded without its dividend.
The day's economic news did little to alter expectations that the next move in interest rates is more likely to be down than up. Trade and retail data offered something for both bulls and bears, with the trade figures stronger than expected, but retail sales continuing the recent run of soft reports. January's retail sales improved from a 0.4% contraction during December, but the increase of 0.1% fell well short of the 0.3% rebound predicted by economists. Those figures appeared to bolster the argument for rate cuts, but strong trade data muddied the picture. The trade surplus increased to $4.55 billion during January from $3.68 billion in December. The market looked at both numbers and shrugged.
With company news in short supply, big moves were minimal at the top end of the market. Bega Cheese was among the picks of the ASX 200, bouncing 3.5% as bargain hunters stepped in after shares ended yesterday at their lowest level in more than two years. Auto parts supplier Super Retail Group jumped 4% after announcing Gary Williams as its new Managing Director of Sports Retailing. Buy now pay later company Afterpay - one of this year's big growth stories - eased 2.8% after hitting a six-month high earlier in the week.
At the speculative end of the market, the day's big winner was a junior oil explorer called Red Emperor Resources, which jumped 80% after reporting multiple potential pay zones at an exploration well in Alaska. Investors have roughly ten days to wait while the company runs a wireline logging program to test whether the reality lives up to the hope.
The local market once again bucked weak leads from the US, where Wall Street stocks fell for a third night. The S&P 500 gave up 0.65% as traders who have done well out of this year's rally continued to lock in profits. Index futures remained downbeat this morning, S&P 500 futures recently down 4.75 points or 0.2%.
Asian markets turned lower. China's Shanghai Composite shed 0.17%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.25% andJapan's Nikkei 0.73%.
Crude oil futures were flat in the US at $US56.20 a barrel. Gold futures edged up 80 cents or 0.1% to $US1,288.30 an ounce. The dollar was buying 70.35 US cents.
Looking ahead to what might move the market over the next 24 hours, Europe is in the spotlight tonight as the European Central Bank releases a monetary policy update and holds a press conference. China is due to release trade figures tomorrow that will be closely scanned for evidence of the impact of US trade tariffs. The US has mostly second-tier economic data ahead tonight, with the week's big-ticket event - the monthly employment update - not due until tomorrow night.
Trading: took the hit on CLA, the last of yesterday's trio of dud buys. The final score was one win, one loss, one brokerage for a net loss of several hundred. Could have been worse, but we didn't get into this game to lose money, did we? Since then I've missed several buy opps by a pip: CDX, BUB, BFG, all just a whisker from a trade.
