Thanks Tweets. Hard work trying to get this post together - HotCopper running slower than ever today. Starting to spoil a good thing. Half-time round-up:
The share market is weaker at lunchtime for the first day in eight, weighed down by soft US futures after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down immediately.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was off 16 points or 0.3% at 4897, with all sectors trading lower bar telecoms, utilities and IT. Rio Tinto was a notable slider, down around 1.5% despite increasing its annual dividend by 20% overnight and flagging a $5 billion share buyback.
"There's not a lot of movement," Martin Hickson, equities analyst at Wilson Asset Management, told Fairfax. "We followed the US down and we're just holding there. There was a flare-up again in Egypt last night. That's probably one of the main drivers for our market."
The dollar eased this morning after Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens said interest rates were "about right" for current economic conditions. The dollar dropped more than half a cent to US 0.9986 cents as traders moderated expectations for further rate rises.
Mr Stevens told the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics interest rates were "about right... given we have a once-in-a-century terms of trade event that is very expansionary and all the things that flow from that. It would be surprising if you didn't have policy a bit on the tight side of normal in that event. Taking account of the fact that of course the exchange rate is doing a fair bit of work for us."
US futures weakened this morning after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dashed hopes that he would end a two-week stand-off with pro-democracy protesters by stepping down from the presidency immediately. Dow futures were recently at -47.
The Shanghai Composite rallied 0.13% this morning and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 0.19%. Japan's Nikkei was closed for a bank holiday.
Crude oil futures rallied 48 cents this morning to $87.52 a barrel and spot gold climbed $2.20 to $1,365.20 an ounce.
Frustrating morning for this trader. Been in the right places but either didn't get filled or only part-filled. Made little more than beer money on CSR and UNX where full fills would have been juicy. Ah well. Them's the breaks.
