Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:Australian shares punched to a...

Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:

Australian shares punched to a nine-and-a-half month high this morning, fuelled by takeover action, an upbeat economic outlook from the RBA and relief that Cyclone Yasi did not cause more damage.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was up 44 points or 0.9% at 4864 after touching its highest level since late April last year. Gold miners and telecoms were the pick as all sectors joined the rally.

Shares in QBE jumped nearly 8% after the insurer announced it will buy an insurance portfolio from Bank of America and said full-year profit would meet expectations.

Also helping sentiment was a bullish outlook for the year from the Reserve Bank, which upgraded its GDP expectation from a rate of 3.75% to 4.25%, despite the impact of floods and Cyclone Yasi. The central bank's quarterly monetary policy statement released this morning scaled back GDP growth for last year from 3.5% to 2.75% but said the economy would accelerate as rebuilding kicks in later in the year.

"By the June quarter the level of GDP is expected to be back close to where it would have been in the absence of the floods and, over the remainder of the forecast period [to June 2013] to be slightly above where it would have been," the RBA said in the statement quoted on Fairfax.

The RBA statement helped the dollar push another 0.25 cents higher to US $1.0189 on increased expectations for interest rate rises later in the year.

Japan's Nikkei rallied 1.2% this morning. Shanghai remained closed for Lunar New Year holidays. Dow futures were recently at -2 (Bloomberg - 20 minute delay).

Crude oil futures rallied 26 cents this morning to $90.90 a barrel. Spot gold eased $2.70 to $1,352.30 an ounce.


Unleash the bulls. Lovely breakouts on the XJO/XAO and plenty of exuberance at the small end. I caught some of the breakout in MOT and took a few points from ECM during a pullback. Also added a few BLT on pullback.