daytrades august 24 afternoon

Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:

Wall Street jitters, political uncertainty and a mixed bag of profit results combined to send Australian shares lower this morning as Japan slumped to a 15-month low.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 39 points or 0.9% at 4390. The index set a four-week low this morning as losses in cyclical sectors overwhelmed a handful of gains in defensive sectors. The biggest fall came in consumer staples, down 2.3% as Wesfarmers traded without its dividend. The big miners and all the big banks except CBA lost ground.

"Once again, volumes are quite low, and a few stocks going ex-dividend are weighing on the market," Burrell Stockbroking director Richard Herring told Fairfax websites.

The response to this morning's earnings reports was mostly negative, with gains for GPT, FLT, AVE and ALL, and selling in ORG, FGL, SEK, CHC, OSH, PPT, MLB and AWE.

Japan's benchmark share index, the Nikkei, slipped below 9,000 this morning for the first time since May 2009 as the strengthening yen hurt exporters. The index ended the morning session 1.18% weaker at 9,008.

The Shanghai Composite was recently down 0.16% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 0.29%. Dow futures were recently at a mildly bearish -21 but improving.

There was further selling in key commodities this morning. Crude oil futures slipped another 26 cents over the last few hours to $72.76 a barrel. The spot gold price fell below $1,220 an ounce before a minor bounce to trade recently at $1,221, down $5.10 this morning. The Aussie dollar was weaker against the major currencies, buying 88.87 U.S. cents.


That was pretty much the morning I thought we would have yesterday. Well done to the CDU traders - due a bounce but I couldn't bring myself to buy on the strength of that news release. Instead I added EKA on pullback and the closing of a gap. Reversing nicely. Otherwise, an overly cautious morning here.