Thanks Oscar and morning crew. Half-time round-up: Shares...

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares trimmed yesterday's sharp fall after Wall Street ended little changed as traders awaited clarity on the White House's tariff plans.

The ASX 200 bounced 37 points or 0.6% to 5939, turning narrowly positive for a week when the index has been unable to string together consecutive gains. Leading the rebound were IT +1.6%, utilities +1.6% and consumer discretionary +1.5%. The morning's gains would have been stronger were index heavyweight BHP not trading without its dividend. The metals & mining sector shed 0.5% and materials 0.1%.

The prospect of tariff exemptions for key trading partners, soothing concerns about a damaging global trade war, helped US stocks closed mixed but barely changed overnight. While the S&P 500 slipped 0.05% and the Dow 0.33%, the Nasdaq gained 0.33%. S&P 500 futures were recently up 1.75 points or 0.06%.

"If S&P 500 implied volatility is telling us anything it is that traders are not convinced this trade saga morphs out into a genuine vol[atility] event like we saw in 2002," IG Markets' Chris Weston told Fairfax. "That said, let's keep an eye out for the formal announcement, which is due either tonight or Friday. This should be interesting as the facts are what the market craves."

Asian markets rallied. China's Shanghai Composite put on 0.17%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.09% and Japan's Nikkei 0.81%.

Crude oil futures reclaimed 21 cents or 0.34% this morning to US$61.36 a barrel. Gold futures inched up 10 cents or 0.01% to US$1,327.70 an ounce. The dollar was buying 78.24 US cents.


Trading: slow day on the ranch. Caught SYA at the low but not enough for two pips to add up to much. Come back, volatility - I miss you.