Half-time round-up:Selling in the financial and gold sectors...

Half-time round-up:

Selling in the financial and gold sectors dragged stock indexes lower this morning.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 3 points or 0.07% at 4857 after most of the big banks followed the US financial sector lower. The local financial sector retreated 0.3%. Gold stocks slumped 1.9% despite a modest recovery in the spot price of the precious metal this morning. Leading the gains were energy +0.7%, utilities +0.7% and health +0.5%.

Asian markets inched higher. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.15% and South Korea was up 0.2%. Dow futures were neutral at +9 as traders seemed largely unmoved by mixed profit results from IBM and Google released after last night's closing bell in the US.

Crude oil continued its bull run, advancing 45 cents this morning to trade recently at $78.04 a barrel. Gold recovered some lost ground, rising nearly $4 to $1,052.60.


An indifferent morning here was rescued by the dump in HVN - grabbed a bundle at 4.30. Also skinny scalps in KCN, GXY and CCP for beer money. Hasn't been my best week's work - bring on the weekend.