daytrades jan 7 afternoon

Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:

The glum start to 2011 continued with shares falling for a fourth day in five to a new four-week low.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 26 points or 0.55% at 4699, with all sectors except industrials and IT trading lower. Resources were once again hit hardest, with gold off 1.6%, metals & mining -1.5% and materials -1.4%.

"It has been another disappointing day on the local share market," CommSec market analyst Juliette Saly told Fairfax. "It certainly hasn't been a great start to 2011. We are still seeing some weakness coming through from mining stocks, which have not been helped out by drops we saw in commodity prices."

Gold remained under pressure as the U.S. dollar continued to rally ahead of tonight's unemployment report. Spot gold was recently down another $2.70 at $1,369.30 an ounce, hovering around the mid-December support level. The Australian dollar dropped another 0.15 cents to 99.36 U.S. cents. Crude oil futures climbed 32 cents to $88.64 a barrel.

Asian markets retreated. Japan's Nikkei eased 0.13%, Shanghai 0.42% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.14%. Dow futures were recently at -10.


Pretty much one-way traffic for the market so far this year but it's creating great swing trading opportunities - UNX, LEG, KRL and MNM to name a few. Barnsty's fib call on MNM was confirmation enough to get me into that at 15 - thanks buddy. This morning's big gap down on LYC was another gift (gaps on the third day of a downturn are high-probability set-ups imo). I went in hard twice there and then rotated into ARU for a couple of points when it was slow to take its cue from LYC (the bigger REE shares tend to move as a pack, so buying the laggard often pays off). It all adds up to my best start to a year since the carefree days before the GFC.