Afternoon trading September 18

Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1 and morning crew.

Half-time wrap:

Tech stocks led a retreat as the ASX followed Wall Street lower ahead of overseas interest rate decisions later in the week.

The ASX 200 slumped 45 points or 0.62%, reversing more than half of Friday's up-surge. The tech sector sagged 2.3% as Xero, WiseTech and Weebit Nano declined.

Paladin Energy, Alumina and NWH Holdings were the best of the gainers. Newcrest, Rio Tinto and South32 were the pick of the heavyweights.

The week ahead brings interest rate decisions in the US, Japan and the UK. The S&P 500 swooned 1.22% on Friday as treasury yields rose and car-makers went on strike.



Personal trading: Did some backtesting of my trading history over the weekend and confirmed a hunch: Mondays are my least successful trading days. Went over my win:loss ratios over the last three years and yep - more losing trades on Mondays than any other day of the week. Winning days outnumber losses but not by nearly as much as other days. Concluded that the sensible thing to do is reduce my trading and average position size on Mondays, but more importantly to increase position size on other days to take advantage of the superior win rate. Eased into the week with modest profits this morning from DUR and A4N.