Market wrap: Traders face another flat start to the week after Friday's US public holiday but the action should pick up mid-week when the north American reporting season gets underway.
Local futures traders expect our market to open marginally weaker than Friday's close. The SPI finished 7 points lower at 3774 after European markets closed virtually unchanged on Friday (London +0.05%, Paris +0.1%, Frankfurst -0.22%).
The price of crude continued to retreat, edging down 1.65% to $65.63, its lowest level since May. Gold last traded at $931.80. Most base metals softened. Copper lost 1.3%, aluminum 2.4%, nickel 2.1% and zinc 1.1%. Lead and tin were unchanged.
There's not much there to drive our market in either direction today, so we could be in for another dull, low-volume session. Thankfully, the US reporting season unofficially kicks off with Alcoa (closely aligned with AWC here) on Wednesday and we should start to see some direction in the market.
In the first quarter, companies were rewarded for saying things were not as bad as they had been. After the strong March/April rally, that won't be enough - investors want to see signs of growth or the market is likely headed back down.
TRADING THEMES TODAY
RANGE TRADING: When market volatility is low, you can still find reliable profits in shares that play out the same cycle over and over. Look for shares that repeat the same price action. Buy at support and sell at resistance. This basic article refers to forex trading but the principles are the same for equities: http://www.fxwords.com/r/range-trading.html.
PATIENCE: The old description of war as "long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of excitement" holds true for trading. Sometimes there just ain't much going on and I reduce my trading accordingly. These are good times to refresh your trading ideas with some reading. There are enough free downloads here to keep me in reading for months: http://freexbooks.blogspot.com/ (Despite the name, the site is not just about forex.)
