Thanks Endless. Half-time round-up:The Australian share market...

Thanks Endless. Half-time round-up:

The Australian share market is flirting with a third straight winning session after a dire jobs report increased the pressure on the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 21 points or 0.5% at 4119 after earlier staging a 109-point turnaround from the morning low, set in the opening minutes of trade. Gold shares and telecoms topped sector gains after a fresh overnight record for the precious metal and a well-received full-year result from Telstra. Property trusts, miners and industrial stocks were the main drags on the market.

The market shook off sharp early losses after the 11.30 am release of July jobs figures, which included a 0.2% jump in unemployment to a nine-month high of 5.1% as jobs growth stalled. The economy shed 22,200 full-time positions last month and added 22,100 part-timers for a net loss of 100.

"Global uncertainty has taken a toll on business confidence, which has contributed to subdued hiring," Moody's Economy.com analyst Katrina Ell told Fairfax. "July's employment figure, combined with sluggish retail sales and downbeat consumer confidence takes the pressure off the Reserve Bank to hike rates in the near term."

The dollar dropped nearly a cent against the greenback after the jobs data but recovered within 20 minutes to trade higher, increasing profits for US investors riding this morning's share market bounce. The dollar was recently up more than two-thirds of a cent at US$1.0242.

Asian markets pared losses as the morning advanced. Japan's Nikkei was recently off 1.29%, Shanghai ahead 0.94% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 0.44%.

US futures rallied after Cisco rallied 6.4% in after-market trade after the networking giant's quarterly earnings topped Wall Street's expectations. Dow futures were recently up 142 points or 2.3%.

Crude oil futures rallied another 83 cents this morning to US$82.82 a barrel. Spot gold was off $13.80 at US$1,783.20 an ounce.


Gotta love it when bad news = good news. The economy may be crumbling but at least interest rates aren't going up. Hooray! Today looks a lot like Tuesday when foreign investors snapped up equities after a dollar dive and got the dual benefit of a rising dollar and a rising market. Today was another good day to buy soon after the open but I was too cautious as so many shares appeared to float in no-man's land. Had a nice scalp in NKP and a barely-worth-it trade in BUY. Added QBE when the market turned, but so far it hasn't followed.