Afternoon trading November 29

Thanks Endless and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Australian shares pushed to a two-week high after hints of a slowdown in US rate rises lit a fire under Wall Street overnight.

The ASX 200 was ahead 31 points or 0.5% at 5756 mid-session after hitting 5779, its highest level since its mid-month meltdown. The index has recovered more than 160 points since bottoming at 5594 on November 21.

The market took its cue from a bumper session in the US after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank's benchmark rate was "just below" neutral - a significant shift from last month when he described the cash rate as "a long way" from neutral. The shift in tone raised hopes of a slowdown in the trajectory of rate increases mapped out in the Fed's "dot plan". Read more here. The S&P 500 jumped 2.3% in response.

"Considering that there's been no interest rate hikes since September, these comments tell us one of two things, which is that the Fed has finally figured out where the neutral rate is or they believe that a pause in tightening has become necessary," Kathy Lien, managing director of foreign-exchange strategy at BK Asset Management, told CNBC. "Chances are it's the latter because economic data has been weakening, stocks have been falling and lower oil and gas prices restrict rather than encourage inflation."

The beaten-up local I.T. sector saw the strongest gain, rising 2.5%. Also notable: materials +1.1%, the Small Ords +1%, financials +0.6% and industrials +0.2%. The rally was hampered by a 0.8% decline in consumer discretionary and 0.5% loss in utilities.

The positive mood extended into Asia, where China's Shanghai Composite put on 0.46%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.57% andJapan's Nikkei 0.74%. S&P 500 futures were recently down 3.5 points or 0.13%.

Crude oil futures drifted near the US$50 level this morning before bouncing 53 cents or 1.05% to US$50.82 a barrel. Gold futures faded $2.10 or 0.17%to US$1,227.70 an ounce. The dollar was buying 72.96 US cents.

 

 

Trading: watched BIT with an itchy finger much of the morning and finally pulled the trigger at 13.5c, then 13c. Profit taken at 14c. Still time for today to turn into a true reversal session, but I'm not convinced it won't test 10c, given the response to yesterday's news release. Should be trades in it along the way. Also watched the pullbacks in MHC and SER without getting a definite buy signal. Might be because I'm not good at picking entries on runaways - never settled on a successful indicator.