Thanks Oscar and morning crew.
Half-time round-up:
Shares suffered their biggest hit in two weeks as investors dumped bank stocks after the government announced a royal commission into the financial sector.
The ASX 200 slumped 62 points before reducing its mid-session loss to 35 points or 0.6% at 5976. The financial sector hit a six-week low and was lately off 0.8% after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull acquiesced to a request from banking chiefs to hold an inquiry to "put an end to the uncertainty and restore trust, respect and confidence" in the sector.
"The nature of political events means the national economic interest is now served by taking what I describe as a regrettable but necessary action," Treasurer Scott Morrison told
Fairfax. "Politics is doing damage to our banking and financial system, and we are taking control as a government to protect the strength of our banking system through a properly constituted inquiry."
The share damage this morning might have been larger if not for gains in select defensive sectors, including telecoms +0.9% and utilities +0.4%. Gold stocks lost 1.4% and metals & mining 1.3%.
Asian markets lost ground. China's Shanghai Composite dropped 0.32%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.13% and Japan's Nikkei 0.02%. Dow futures were recently down 23 points or 0.1%.
Crude oil futures inched up six cents or 0.1% this morning to US$57.36 a barrel. Gold futures bounced $1.80 or 0.14% to US$1,288 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.83 US cents.
Frustrating morning due in part to technical issues alluded to elsewhere on these threads. CommSec's techies must have missed the news about the royal commission and forgotten to switch on the other server to cope with the volume. Cost me a couple of missed entries. Only caught one trade this morning and that was a part-fill in MYQ.
