daytrades june 16 afternoon

Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:

Strengthening resource shares helped push Australian stock indices to one-month highs this morning.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was ahead by 49 points or 1.1% at 4554 after earlier touching its highest level since May 17. There were signs of improving risk appetite, with cyclical sectors faring well and the Small Ordinaries index outperforming the big caps. Leading the gains were the consumer discretionary sector +2.1%, industrials +1.8%, materials +1.8% and metals & mining +1.8%.

The robust local economic recovery moderated slightly in April as the European debt crisis started to bite. The WBC-MI leading index of economic activity recorded growth of 7.6% - well above the long-term trend of 3% but below March's 12-year high of 8.8%.

"This is the first slowing after 10 consecutive months of sharp acceleration," Westpac senior economist Matthew Hassan said in a statement quoted on The Australian website. "The sharp turnaround in commodity prices and fall in equities alone could see more slowing in the growth rate of the leading index in May-June."

Home building surged in the first quarter. Work started on 42,399 new homes, the biggest quarterly total in almost six years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said this morning.

Japan's Nikkei climbed above 10,000 for the first time in nearly a month, rising 1.55% in morning trade. Shanghai and Hong Kong were closed for holidays. Dow futures were recently at -20.

Crude oil futures were unchanged this morning at $76.97 a barrel. The spot gold price was $1.60 weaker at $1,232.80 an ounce.


This was one of those merry mornings when you could buy many of the mid-caps at the open and sell 10 minutes later for a nice profit. I rode MCC and FLT. Also scalped the slower-moving TRY and recently added a speculator in DOW. My trade of the month was an overnight hold in NWSLV, which succeeded beyond my wildest dreams thanks to News Corp's take-over offer for BSkyB. Dumb luck but I'll take it.