Afternoon trading October 10

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The Australian market set a new 17-week low before paring two days of heavy selling.

The ASX 200 hit 6023, its weakest point since mid-June before rallying 12 points or 0.2% to 6053 mid-session. Gains in the health sector +2%, consumer discretionary +1.8% and telecoms +0.7% outweighed another soft morning for utilities -0.7%, financials -0.2% and materials -0.5%. At this morning's low the benchmark index had given up more than 160 points in three sessions as global markets adjusted to a major cash reallocation to the US to take advantage of improving interest rates there.

Today's local session mirrored overnight events in the US and in Asia this morning. Last night the S&P 500 closed 0.14% lower after trading both sides of break-even. S&P 500 futures were recently ahead two points or 0.07%. In Asia, China's Shanghai Composite recovered 0.22%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.76% and Japan's Nikkei 0.08%.

Crude oil futures deteriorated 20 cents or 0.27% this morning to US$74.76 a barrel. Gold futures recovered $1.80 or 0.15% to US$1,193.30 an ounce. The dollar was buying 71.23 US cents.



Trading: EDE provided most of the excitement on an otherwise thin morning. Clipped a ticket there and another in GLN.