daytrade diaries... january 14 part 2

Half-time round-up:

Australian shares rallied sharply today, boosted late morning by a surprise fall in unemployment.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was up 45 points or 0.92% at 4913, erasing this week's earlier losses. The battered metals & mining sector led today's gains, up 1.5%, followed by materials +1.4% and financials and property trusts at +0.9%.

The market built on its early advance after news that the unemployment rate eased to 5.5% last month from a revised 5.6% rate in November. The employment market added 35,200 jobs last month - far more than the 10,000 jobs economists expected.

"These are extraordinary results," Moody's Economy.com's Matt Robinson told Fairfax. "The strength of labour market results over the last six months is amazing."

Asian markets recovered some of yesterday's heavy losses. Japan's Nikkei gained 1.01%, Shanghai 0.41% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.56%. Dow futures were +9.

Gold continued its overnight rally. The spot price tacked on another $5.60 this morning to trade recently at $1,143.10 an ounce. Crude oil futures recovered 15 cents this morning to reach $79.80 a barrel.


Well done to the ADO traders this morning - great work. Been a solid morning here. Caught the bounce in CGF and took a modest profit on GUN from yesterday. In and out of NGF for brokerage. Added PAN for a potential reversal after a three-day fall and a bounce in the nickel price overnight. Jury still out on that one.

PS I was a day early in posting about the pending Intel result this morning - it follows tonight's U.S. session. Apologies.