daytrade diaries... november 2 part 2

Half-time round-up:

The Australian stock market slumped to a seven-week low this morning as regional markets tracked Wall St lower.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 100 points or 2.16% at 4543 but well off the morning low of 4517. A broad pullback saw all sectors trading in negative territory, with IT (-4.9%), industrials (-2.6%) and financials (-2.7%) hit hardest.

Department store Myer Holdings listed at midday and was recently trading 24 cents or 5.85% below its listing price of $4.10.

Local economic news was more upbeat than overseas. Home prices jumped 4.2% in the September quarter, beating analysts' expectations of a 3% gain. The government revised its economic growth forecast to 1.5% for the year to end-June 2010, up from a 0.5% contraction predicted in May.
The government also forecast lower unemployment than expected in May, trimming its jobless forecast to peak at 6.75% in 2009/10, against an earlier prediction of 8.5% in 2010/11.

Asian markets skidded lower. Japan's Nikkei lost 2.64% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 2.57%. Dow futures were intriguingly positive at +29. Oil and gold futures were both a few cents lower but the changes were negligible.


A profitable morning here but not my best work. Set a dozen buy orders pre-open but was too bearish and only three were hit: CGF, GXY and IRE. Closed the first two profitably and am at break-even on IRE. Would like to have had a few more irons in the fire. As others have noted, today hasn't been as brutal as expected - plenty of buying interest still around, helped perhaps by the bright local news.