Half-time round-up:Australian stocks staged a wobbly recovery...

Half-time round-up:

Australian stocks staged a wobbly recovery this morning as regional markets struggled towards positive territory after yesterday's heavy sell-off.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 9 points or 0.22% at 4378 as Asian markets jagged in and out of positive territory. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.38% this morning but Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.12% and China's SSE lost 0.22%.

Leading the local market's risers were industrials, up 0.8%, IT +0.4% and telecoms +0.3%.

Dow futures rallied with the modest recovery in Asia, recently trading 32 points higher. Gold futures turned north. After touching $930, this morning, gold was recently at $938.10, up $6 and climbing. Oil was also recovering, up 40 cents at $67.19.

Been a cracking morning's bounce trading. I set orders before the open and caught the tumbles and reversals in ABY, MMX, LNG and GXY. Took profits from dabbles in SHC and UMC from yesterday. More recently, scraped a pygmy profit out of WSA - reluctant to stay long in any company that sells off after reporting.

Potential overnight holds: reporting today and doing well were MND, JHX, UGL and OST. There should be some nice reversal trades tomorrow if the US play nice tonight, as looks increasingly possible.