Thanks Tweets - doing a great job. The vote on the number of threads seems clear-cut: three threads are here to stay. Thanks to all for voting and thanks Roaminoz for arranging a ballot box - you do a better job than the average American polling both. (Anyone remember hanging chads? Anyone except Al Gore?)
Half-time round-up:
A recovery in battered resource stocks has helped local shares edge higher for the first day in three.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was up 29 points or 0.63% at 4623 after a mixed bag of earnings reports. An upbeat outlook from ANZ drove the financial sector to a 0.6% rise, but the strongest gains came in gold +2.1%, utilities +2.1% and metals & mining +1.5%.
Woolworths cheered the market by beating expectations and reporting rising sales. But QBE plunged more than 7% after missing its profit target.
Business lending dropped last month, the Reserve Bank revealed today. Total credit rose 0.4% but business credit fell 0.1% to be down 7.8% from a year earlier.
Australian home prices continue to rise, according to data released this morning. Prices increased by 1.8% in January, according to RP Data, for a 12-month rise of 11.8%.
Asian markets were mixed. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.53% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.27%, but Shanghai was down 0.4% Dow futures were at a moderately bullish +36.
The spot gold price continued to climb, adding another $1.90 to $1,107.80 an ounce this morning. Crude oil futures were 25 cents higher at $78.56 a barrel.
Plenty of volatility in the mid-caps over the last few days, providing nice bounce trades. BEN and BKN were the pick of my buys this morning. Also squeezed some peanuts out of UNS and ABC. Still holding FXJ but the buying will need to pick up to turn a profit.
