Afternoon trading September 4

Thanks @shovel40, @Fiji1 and morning crew.

Half-time wrap:

The share market plunged towards its heaviest loss in four weeks after Wall Street staged a rerun of last month's early-August US recession panic.

The ASX 200 slumped 160 points or 1.98% by mid-session as a broad sell-off lowered all sectors. Declines ranged from 0.6% for the utilities sector up to 3.06% for energy after global growth worries drove oil into negative territory for the year.

More than 19 out of every 20 ASX 200 stocks succumbed to the sell-off. Orora was the only stock to gain more than 3%. Qantas, IAG and Webjet were others to trade positive.

The morning's key economic release showed annual growth slowed to 1% last quarter, the most anaemic pace since 1991, aside from the Covid lockdown era. The economy expanded just 0.2% in Q4.

Today's bloodbath followed a repeat of the opening session of August in the US. The trigger was again soft factory data, which revived global growth worries in the wake of soft Chinese and eurozone manufacturing reports earlier in the week. The S&P 500 shed 2.12% with high-flying AI chip stocks feeling the heat.


Personal trading: Started the day with a painful loss after taking VR1 late yesterday at horizontal support for what was supposed to be an easy pip this morning. Today: no support. Timber. Hoped to make it back with a few bounce trades, but only hit was EL8 and I exited that for brokerage when it stalled. So, yeah: crap morning.