Afternoon folks.Half-time round-up: Australian shares tracked...

Afternoon folks.

Half-time round-up: Australian shares tracked Wall St and Asian markets lower this morning. Weakness in BHP and the big banks dragged the ASX 200 down 26 points or 0.7% to 3798 at lunchtime.

The Nikkei in Japan and Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell more than 1% during the morning session. Dow futures were recently off 30 points. Gold is looking very bullish after adding $5 this morning.

Been a sluggish morning at this trading desk. Nice profit when MAP broke through $2 and ran (useful tip: the third attempt at a resistance level has a high probability of succeeding and is nearly always worth trading). Scalped BBI off its lows but settled for a meagre 2 points - heavy downward pressure. Added TAM for some gold exposure but it's slow as mud so far.