Thanks Tweets and Barnsty for this morning's reports.Half-time...

Thanks Tweets and Barnsty for this morning's reports.

Half-time round-up:

Falling resource stocks steered the share market to a 13-week low this morning before a sharp recovery as Asian markets welcomed economic news from China.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was ahead 2 points or 0.06% at 4564 after earlier hitting its lowest level since mid-March. Resource stocks were the biggest drag on the market, with the metals & mining sector off 0.9%, gold stocks 0.6% and energy 0.3%. Financial stocks were up 0.4%.

China's benchmark share index rallied after the noon AEST release of monthly economic news, which included inflation in line with expectations and industrial production, retails sales and the producer price index slightly ahead of economists' predictions. Read more here.

The Shanghai Composite was recently up 1.01%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng reversed early losses to trade recently at +0.22% and Japan's Nikkei was up 0.16%. Dow futures were recently at +60.

In domestic economic news, business conditions and confidence last month continued to wallow near February's post-Queensland flood levels, despite strength in mining sentiment. Business conditions eased four points to +1 and confidence dropped a point to +6, according to the NAB survey. Mining conditions bucked the trend, hitting their highest level since the survey began.

Crude oil futures rallied sharply after the release of the Chinese data, rising 73 cents to US $97.21 a barrel. Spot gold was at US $1519.60 an ounce. The dollar was buying US $1.0641.


Glad the market liked the Chinese news because the XJO looked pretty ugly mid-morning. Uranium shares are obviously on the nose at present, but that can create intraday bounce opportunities if the selling gets overdone. I caught PDN and also added a few BMN. Also been in and out of AQG and CSS.