Afternoon trading Oct 16

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares punched to a five-month high this morning, testing a multi-month trading range that has dampened gains this year.
  
The ASX 200 put on 34 points or 0.6% en route to a session high of 5856, a level last seen mid-May before the index settled into a long sideways pattern. The index has advanced every session since October 6, bar a brief pause on October 10.

Today's rally lifted all sectors, with the best returns coming from metals & mining +1.8%, materials +1.6% and telecoms 1.5%. Health was the weakest sector with a gain of 0.2%. Financials added 0.3%.

The Australian rally mapped gains in Europe, where the benchmark index hit a near four-month high on Friday. Germany's DAX reached an all-time high, in line with Wall Street. Japan's Nikkei rallied 0.75% to a 21-year high this morning. However, analysts warned Australian shares may struggle to match gains elsewhere.

"Any economic growth in Australia isn't really flowing through to corporate profits which is keeping the broader market within this range," Matthew Sherwood, head of investment strategy at Perpetual Investments, told Fairfax. "Corporate Australia has struggled to grow earnings above nominal GDP, so the best thing we can say is it's not getting any worse."


China's Shanghai Composite put on 0.05% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.75%. Dow futures were recently ahead 21 points or 0.1%.

Crude oil futures surged 41 cents or 0.8% this morning to US$51.86 a barrel. Gold futures inched up 40 cents or 0.03% to US$1,305 an ounce. The dollar was buying 78.75 US cents.


Dunno where this rally has come from, but it has been a ripper. We're finally playing catch-up with the rest of the world. Not quite clear of the long multi-month trading range, but we're close. Trading: caught lows in MSM twice and caught a part-fill in ALY.