Thanks Oscar and morning crew.
Half-time round-up:
The share market's dismal run extended into a new week with the big banks plumbing multi-year lows and regional markets ignoring Wall Street's Friday rebound.
The ASX 200 was off 61 points or 1% at 5834 mid-session after bottoming at 5796, the index's weakest point since early April. A global rout that began last Monday has stripped close to 400 points in six bruising sessions.
This morning's plunge was led by the high-flying tech sector, down 1.9% to erase Friday's recovery. The beleaguered financial sector tumbled 1.6% to a level last seen in November 2016. With the market almost entirely red, the materials sector shed 1.3%, industrials 1.1% and utilities 1.3%. Energy was the best of the bunch with a rise of 0.3%.
US equity futures turned south with Asian markets after President Donald Trump threatened further trade sanctions against China. Read more here. S&P 500 futures were recently off 8.15 points or 0.29%. China's Shanghai Composite shed 0.46%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.15% andJapan's Nikkei 1.32%.
“It’s still a very fragile and vulnerable trading environment after after last week’s moves,” Nick Twidale, chief operating officer at Rakuten Securities’ Australian unit, told Bloomberg. “Some of the geopolitical risks that have risen over the weekend, e.g. Trump’s comments regarding the Saudis, have got investors on the back foot to start the week. No further progress re: U.S.-China is going to continue to weigh on sentiment.”
Crude oil futures bounced 76 cents or 1.07% this morning to US$72.10 a barrel. Gold futures rose $2.40 or 0.2%to US$1,224.40 an ounce. The dollar was buying 70.99 US cents.
Biggest complaint about the newlook HC: the 'Write Your Post' window is too small for this length of post. Very finicky to work with. Like trying to perform keyhole surgery. Trading: still picking off short-term oversolds. Took SWM but probably should have held longer. TAW was the other. Hindsight shows BIT was the kind of exceedingly rare trade that changes lives. Shakes head.
