Afternoon trading Sep 14

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares struggled for direction as traders weighed strong domestic employment data against unexpectedly weak Chinese factory output.

The ASX 200 traded both sides of break-even before fading to a half-time loss of 15 points or 0.3% at 5729 as a swag of Chinese economic reports missed targets. August industrial production, retail sales and investment data all came in lower than analysts expected. Growth in industrial production eased to 6% last month from 6.4% in July. Analysts had tipped growth of 6.6%. Retail sales grew 10.1% year-on-year (down from 10.4% in July and below analysts' target of 10.5%) and fixed asset investment were up 7.8% on the same time last year (versus from 8.3% in July).

The news was brighter at home, with the economy adding 54,200 positions last month, three times what was expected. The jobless rate held steady at 5.6%. The dollar ticked around a quarter of a cent higher following the news, lately buying 80.1 US cents.

“Over the last six months over a quarter of a million jobs have been created,” Craig James at CBA told Bloomberg. “For a six-month period, you have to go back 17 years to find a stronger result. The economy is clearly gathering momentum.”

Gains in energy stocks +0.5%, telecoms +0.4% and financials +0.3% were outweighed by falls in metals & mining -1.5%, health -1.1% and gold -0.7%.

A subdued morning in Asia left China's Shanghai Composite up 0.13%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 0.27% and Japan's Nikkei up 0.04%. Dow futures were recently off eight points or 0.04%.

Crude oil futures gave up nine cents or 0.18% this morning at US$49.21 a barrel. Gold futures eased $2.10 or 0.16% to US$1,325.90 an ounce.


Trading: considered buying PAB at 0.7c, looked away for a moment and next thing it was at 1.2c. Left myself room for improvement there. Tentative dabble in SGC.