Afternoon trading November 20

Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1, @Patterns and morning crew.

Half-time wrap:

A rebound in energy stocks and strength in the major banks helped the share market edge towards its first gain in three sessions.

The ASX 200 climbed 10 points or 0.14% by the halfway mark. A 4.1% bounce in the price of Brent crude on Friday helped lift the energy sector 1%. Financials firmed 0.67%, with the big four banks all gaining at least 0.7%. Gold miners, utilities and supermarkets were among the morning's drags.

Today's tentative rally mirrored a similar session on Wall Street that ended a third straight weekly advance for the major indices. The S&P 500 inched up 0.13% on the day and 2.2% for the week.


Personal trading: Mildly profitable morning despite nothing running smoothly. Needed three swings to get a profit from ACM. Half a pip from NOX. Irritating tiny part-fill in RLG where brokerage outweighed a 1.5 pip bounce.