Afternoon trading Oct 30

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares advanced on the penultimate session of the quarter but failed to challenge this year's high despite strong gains on Wall Street on Friday.

The ASX 200 put on 18 points or 0.3% to reach 5921 by the halfway point after peaking at 5927, short of the 2017 high-water mark pf 5945 set back in May. The local market has been playing catch-up after lagging global peers for much of the year.

"After stalling for six months, despite the continuing rally in equities globally, the Australian market has jumped around 5 per cent in recent weeks, it seems finally responding to the now widely recognised broadening in the global recovery," Citi's Tony Brennan told Fairfax. "Commodity prices have held up, and company analysts have upgraded resource sector earnings, adding a couple of percent to market earnings growth in FY18. Confidence about the local economy has likely also benefited, even with indicators still patchy, encouraging investors with limited interest recently back into the market.... Our forecast remains for the ASX200 to rise above 6000 and reach 6250 by mid next year."

Energy stocks led the rally, rising 1.7%. Also strong: gold +1.19%, IT +0.7% and industrials +0.5%. The materials sector added 0.2% and financials 0.3%. Telecoms was the only sector to lose ground, falling 0.8%.

China's Shanghai Composite slipped 0.18%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.38% and Japan's Nikkei gained 0.18%. Dow futures were recently down 23 points or 0.1%.

Crude oil futures edged up six cents or 0.11% this morning to US$53.96 a barrel. Gold futures gained 70 cents or 0.06% to US$1,272.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.76 US cents.


Some big prangs this morning: MUS, IAM, ALY, ADN, among others. Commiserations to traders. Avoiding big losses is more than half the secret to success in this game. Sometimes losses fall out of an empty sky - not much you can do about those, other than trade with sensible position sizes to avoid the risk of wipe-out. Other times warning signs were there if you were thinking clearly (something many of us abandon once we've entered a trade, and confirmation bias sets in). On the threads people talk about upcoming make-or-break quarterlies, but when reports are finally published it's obvious they were only prepared mentally for the 'make' outcome and were never willing to accept the other possibility. Fatal for would-be traders. Trading: like several here, I caught the bounce in ALY. Hesitated too long on MUS and missed the easy money.