Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1 and morning crew. Apologies again for...

Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1 and morning crew. Apologies again for the balls up with this morning's pre-market thread title.

Half-time wrap:

The share market looks set to end the month little changed after rallying this morning for the first time in four sessions.

The ASX 200 bounced 35 points or 0.45% to 7663, just a point below where it closed on April 30. Gold miners, small caps and healthcare providers offered some of the morning's best returns. Tech stocks dragged, mirroring overnight down-pressures on Wall Street.

Today's gains came despite disappointing Chinese factory and services activity readings. Factory activity unexpectedly contracted last month, according to the official purchasing managers index. The manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.5 this month from 50.4 in April. Readings below 50 indicate shrinking activity. Services activity continued to expand, but at a slower rate than economists forecast.

Wall Street's main benchmarks finished lower overnight as a shocking trading update from Salesforce and weakness among tech stocks outweighed solid gains in other parts of the market. The S&P 500 gave up 0.6%.


Personal trading: Scraped a couple of pips from KP2. Took A11 on retrace back near the breakout level. Apart from that, spent the morning setting bids one pip too low or too late. I'm looking at you, ANX, OBL.