Afternoon trading September 19

Thanks Grundlebundle and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Shares rallied this morning as regional markets shrugged off tit-for-tat exchanges in the trade war between China and the US.

The ASX 200 advanced 29 points or 0.5% to 6190 mid-session, positioning the index for its highest close in two weeks. Resource stocks led the charge, the metals & mining sector gaining 2.5%, materials 2%, gold 0.9% and energy 0.8%. Health stocks gave back 0.9%, industrials 0.2% and utilities 0.1%.

Regional markets took their cue from a positive close on Wall Street despite China's announcement that it will retaliate against US$200 billion of tariffs on Chinese imports into the US by imposing its own tariffs on US$60 billion of US imports. In addition, China said it had lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organisation over the US tariffs. The S&P 500 put on 0.54% last night. This morning, China's Shanghai Composite added 0.92%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.04% and Japan's Nikkei 1.52%. S&P 500 futures were recently up quarter of a point or 0.01%.

“China is limited in its scope for direct retaliation from here, with only US$50 billion worth of imports left to target, but so far has refrained from threatening to tariff all imports from the US,” Jo Masters from ANZ Research told CNBC. “Increasingly it looks like this will be a prolonged dispute. And as it escalates, so does the economic fall-out."

Crude oil futures improved six cents or 0.09% this morning to US$69.91 a barrel. Gold futures edged up $1.10 or 0.1% to US$1,204 an ounce. The dollar was buying 72.24 US cents.



Trading: nice morning trading the retraces in FOD and 14D. Traded each twice. None of the wins were huge, but they add up.