Afternoon trading Nov 15

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The share market's losing run extended into a fourth session after key commodities declined and the dollar lost its grip on 76 US cents.

The ASX 200 fell 18 points or 0.3% to 5951 by the halfway mark as resource stocks were hurt by overnight losses in crude and base metals. The energy sector shed 2%, metals & mining 1.7% and materials 1.2%. The financial sector traded even and there were gains for IT +0.6%, gold +0.5% and health +0.2%.

Commodities took a hit overnight from yesterday's mildly-disappointing Chinese economic figures. Crude dropped 2.1%, nickel 5.7%, copper 2% and aluminium 1.2%. Fear of a Chinese slowdown helped push the Australian dollar down to 75.9 US cents.

"The Chinese data... was broadly speaking negative. They paint a view of the Chinese economy where growth looks to be slowing," Danske Bank analyst Jens Pedersen told Fairfax. "The way we see China here in the big picture is for credit tightening, which is feeding through to the real economy, and that will mean lower demand for base metals."

US equity futures remained gloomy after the S&P 500 fell 0.23% overnight. S&P 500 futures were recently off 8.5 points or 0.33%. China's Shanghai Composite lost 0.46%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.4% and Japan's Nikkei 0.86%.

Crude oil futures dived another 61 cents or 1.1% this morning to US$55.09 a barrel. Gold futures eased 50 cents or 0.04% to US$1,282.40 an ounce.


Wild morning among the specs - the trading equivalent of a barroom brawl. Some heavy blows landing. Had to be nimble and quick or get knocked on your backside. The CommSec lag problems didn't help - like fighting with both hands tied behind your back and your ankles knotted together. Probably cost me a bit, but at least the platform didn't fall over. Suspect they were caught out by what felt like stiff volume at the spec end. That's been a problem as long as I've traded with them. Doesn't happen often but still seems to happen on the days it matters most. Trading: as Shants suggested, I was in my element, thought not everything went my way. My trading pad shows I took DEG twice, ASN, EYM twice, LKE twice, PIO, AUZ and CDT. Out of everything except the latter.