daytrades april 22 pre-market

Morning traders.

Market wrap: Australian stocks are set to open lower this morning after falls in Europe, a flat night on Wall Street and mixed commodity prices.

With 15 minutes left to trade, the local June SPI futures contract was down 35 points at 4937 after a choppy night of overseas trade.

U.S. stocks see-sawed in an out of positive territory as traders digested a mixed bag of earnings reports and falls in European equities over financial regulatory worries and on-going concerns about Greece.

The Dow rebounded in the last hour to close 8 points or 0.07% higher for a third day of gains, the Nasdaq squeezed out a gain of 0.17% and the benchmark S&P 500 finished 0.1% in the red.

"The market is taking a bit of a breather after finishing its correction from Friday to Monday morning," a U.S. managing director told MarketWatch.

Health care stocks slumped on disappointing earnings results. Also weaker were airlines -2.3%, oilers -0.8% and biotechs -1.8%. Financials were mixed and there were gains for REITs +1.8%, transport stocks +1.2% and precious metals miners +0.4%.

Earlier, weakening banking stocks dragged key European markets lower on fears that regulators will hit banks with fresh taxes. Also harming sentiment, the cost of insuring the Greek government's debt against default reached record levels as delayed talks began overnight between Greece, the IMF and the European Union about a rescue package. Britain's FTSE slumped 1.04%, Germany's DAX 0.5% and France's CAC 1.22%.

The U.S. dollar benefitted from worries in Europe, with the U.S. dollar index rising 0.22% overnight, pressuring dollar-denominated commodity prices.

Oil was undermined by a surprise rise in U.S. inventories. Crude futures were recently down 33 cents or 0.4% at $83.52 a barrel.

Metals delivered a mixed picture, with gold, platinium and palladium on the rise but a muddier outlook elsewhere. Platinum and palladium hit two-year highs on signs of improving demand. The spot gold price was recently $6.10 or 0.6% higher than Tuesday's New York close at $1,146.50 an ounce.

Copper was little changed as robust Chinese import data was offset by a rising U.S. dollar. In London, copper closed flat, aluminium dipped 1%, lead 0.4%, nickel 0.3% and tin 1.1%, while zinc rose 1.9%.

TRADING THEMES TODAY

BOUNCE TRADING: Unless I'm missing something important, today's futures number looks unnecessarily bearish to me, raising the prospect of some cheap entries at this morning's opening bell. Our market may have got a little ahead of itself yesterday but I don't see enough in the overnight action to justify that opening discount. Ebay has tumbled 8.5% in after-market trade after reporting soft earnings and a weak outlook in the U.S. but I doubt it has the stature to guarantee falls on Wall Street tonight. Happy to be corrected.

ECONOMIC NEWS: Monthly local motor vehicle sales are due at 11.30 am. The economic schedule is heavier in the U.S. tonight as the end of the week nears, with unemployment claims, PPI, existing home sales, natural gas storage and a speech by President Obama about Wall Street reforms.

Good luck to all.