Afternoon trading Sep 27

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares sagged below last week's seven-month closing low as the dollar slid beneath 79 US cents.

The ASX 200 fell 18 points or 0.3% to 5653 by the mid-point of the session and would need to end above 5655 to avoid its weakest close since February. The benchmark index drifted for a second day after a flat finish on Wall Street overnight after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen appeared to reconfirm the likelihood of a December rate rise. The speech helped push the Australian dollar below 79 US cents for the first time this month, lately buying 78.79 US cents.

"Without going into the speech in any depth, the wash-up is the comments were very much aligned with the recent FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] statement, but throw further weight that a December hike is on the cards," Chris Weston, market analyst at IG said. "With all the Fed chatter the implied probability of a December rate hike has pushed up a touch to 70%."

A subdued session in Asia saw China's Shanghai Composite edged up 0.01%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng put on 0.48% and Japan's Nikkei shed 0.29%. Dow futures were recently up a point or 0.01%.

Crude oil futures added 23 cents or 0.44% this morning to US$52.11 a barrel. Gold futures gave up $3.10 or 0.24% to US$1,298.70 an ounce.


Needed a busy morning to get my trading week back on track - got it with wins in PDZ, MEI and JRV. Watchlist also got a welcome boost from all those runners at the spec end. Good returns for many here.