Thanks Oscar and morning crew.
Half-time round-up:
The ASX struggled to retain a second day of gains as caution set in ahead of tomorrow night's much-anticipated central bank policy update in the US.
The ASX 200 rallied as much as 21 points in early action before briefly turning negative and halving its gain to nine points or 0.2% at 5730 at the halfway mark. Global share action for the rest of this week was expected to be overshadowed by a two-day US Federal Reserve meeting commencing tonight and set to conclude with a statement on Thursday morning local time that is anticipated to clarify the bank's timetable for trimming a balance sheet bloated by years of stimulus buying.
The Reserve Bank this morning hinted it was in no rush to join the global move towards quantitative tightening. The minutes from the September meeting showed that while policymakers welcomed the recent pick-up in employment, the outlook for the economy was clouded by low wage growth and inflation, a strong dollar and elevated household debt. The bank has not raised rates since 2010.
Read more here.
Telecoms was the pick of the sectors, rising 0.8%, followed by materials +0.5% and financials +0.4%. At the other end, gold stocks lost 0.4%, health 0.4% and IT 0.3%.
China's Shanghai Composite dipped 0.16% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.13%. Japan's Nikkei played catch-up following a public holiday with a jump of 1.43%. Dow futures were recently ahead nine points or 0.04%.
Crude oil futures were off a cent or 0.02% this morning at US$49.90 a barrel. Gold futures eased 50 cents or 0.04% to US$1,310.30 an ounce. The dollar was buying 79.66US cents.
No surprise to see PAB take a breather after jumping - what, 700%? - in three sessions. Volume on this pullback is low - a bullish sign. I'll be interested tomorrow/Thursday, ideally at lower levels. Time to check the fib lines. Trading: took two buys to squeeze a profit out of 4CE, then moved into UTR without immediate reward. Profitable morning but slow-going.
