Thanks Oscar and morning crew. Half-time round-up: The ASX...

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The ASX pushed towards its fifth gain in six sessions and a fresh multi-month high despite a lacklustre start to a new quarterly US earnings season.

The ASX 200 was seven points or 0.1% ahead at 5802 at the halfway mark after earlier reaching the index's highest level since the end of June. The index has tacked on more than 150 points since last Thursday's eight-month closing low. Today's rally was fuelled by gains in health stocks +0.6%, consumer staples +0.5%, telecoms +0.4% and metals & mining +0.3%.  

Overnight, US stocks eased off record levels following indifferently-received earning updates from Citigroup and JPMorgan. The S&P 500 shed 0.17%.

"Not a huge reaction to earnings despite relatively healthy quarter out of the early reporters," Bryan Reilly, senior investment analyst at CIBC Atlantic Trust in the US, told Fairfax. "The risk is similar to the second quarter in that stocks are being priced for perfection."

Dow futures were recently down five points or 0.02%. China's Shanghai Composite edged up 0.05%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.04% and Japan's Nikkei 0.36%.

Crude oil futures advanced 25 cents or 0.49% this morning to US$50.85 a barrel. Gold futures added $1 or 0.08% to US$1,297.30 an ounce. The dollar was buying 78.33 US cents.


The end of a very positive week for the local market - feels like we're finally playing ball after a long spell on the bench. Some sort of consolidation/retrace seems likely in the next few sessions unless we're witnessing a real sea-change in sentiment. Fingers crossed. Trading: struggled to get any runs on the board. Took PGM on retrace.