Afternoon trading Oct 5

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares edged off a seven-month closing low before unexpectedly weak retail data capped their advance.

The ASX 200 hit a session high of 5674 before trimming its advance to 11 points or 0.2% at 5663 at the halfway point. The index yesterday closed at its lowest level since February. Gains this morning in metals & mining +1.1%, gold +1.1% and IT +0.8% were partly offset by declines in financials -0.2% and telecoms -0.1%.

The dollar fell almost a third of a cent to 78.36 US cents after August retail data showed sales declined 0.6% from the previous month. Analysts had expected growth to pick up 0.3%. The consumer discretionary sector was lately down 0.3%.

"Today's August retail trade report was a shocker," a CBA analyst told Fairfax. "It now looks increasingly likely that strong sales growth in April and May were the anomaly in 2017. The other six months of the year have so far been weak. It means that the concerns we flagged earlier in the year about the outlook for the retail sector are unfortunately coming to fruition."

Regional activity was dampened by public holidays in China and Hong Kong and uncertainty over tomorrow night's monthly US jobs report. Japan's Nikkei dipped 0.02%. Dow futures were recently down five points or 0.02%.

"It seems markets are treading water ahead of [US nonfarm] payrolls on Friday given more than usual uncertainty over the numbers due to possible hurricane effects," Tapas Strickland, NAB economist, told CNBC.

Crude oil futures faded nine cents or 0.18% this morning to US$49.89 a barrel. Gold futures improved 20 cents or 0.02% to US$1,277 an ounce.


The XJO hit the bottom of its range yesterday, so we might see a few positive days from here to push it back up to the ceiling. Trading: profits taken on MSM from yesterday and UTR from last week. Feels like I should be busier - AGY was a bad miss. A lot of tempting pullbacks around but most have done CRs miles below current levels. Seem to be an extraordinary number of raisings this week.