daytrade diaries... november 23 part 2

Half-time round-up:

A surge in commodity prices boosted miners and helped local stocks shrug off a weak lead from Wall Street this morning.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 31 points or 0.68% higher at 4717 after the price of gold hit a new high and crude oil bounced off Friday's low. The local gold sector spiked 2.7% this morning as the spot price of the precious metal broke through $1,160 an ounce. The metals & mining sector gained 1.3%, materials 1.4%, utilities 1.4% and consumer staples 1.4%.

October car sales data released this morning provided fresh evidence of growing consumer confidence. Sales of new vehicles were 3.7% higher than September and 3.3% higher than last October.

Key Asian markets advanced. Shanghai rallied 0.43% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.38%. Japan was closed for a public holiday.

Dow futures were a healthy +28. The spot gold price was recently trading at $1,160.70 an ounce. Crude oil futures pushed back through $78 this morning, recently trading at $78.09 a barrel.


A moderate morning here. Small bounce trade in NTC. Used this morning's weakness in OEX as an opportunity to start building a position for their Timor drilling program (first well spudded on Friday, big target, completion late December). Have a buy order for BCC sitting at 13.5 - looks to be 0.5c too optimistic...