daytrades june 17 afternoon

Thanks Tweets. Half-time round-up:

Local shares drifted lower this morning for the first session in seven as a flat lead from Wall Street encouraged profit-taking.

"It was a relatively benign lead in the end, after a choppy session on Wall Street, so the market is fairly quiet," Macquarie Private Wealth adviser Helen Spencer told Fairfax websites.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 14 points or 0.3% at 4544 as falls among the big banks and miners outweighed gains for industrials, gold and health.

In company news, Swan Gold Mining said it has canned two gold developments planned for August because uncertainty over the proposed resources tax prevented it from raising equity. A spokesman said the projects in W.A. would have employed 150 people.

Asian markets were mixed. Japan's Nikkei slipped 0.42% during the morning session but Shanghai (+0.16%) and Hong Kong's Hang Seng (+0.47%) were both higher as they caught up after public holidays this week. Dow futures were recently at -26.

Crude oil futures gave back 40 cents this morning to trade at $77.12 a barrel as the U.S. dollar gained against most major currencies. The spot gold price was $3.20 stronger at $1,232.20 an ounce.


Not much action out there this morning. I cashed out of GOT from yesterday for half a day's wage - hoped for more. Rode QBE some of the way and squeezed a skinny scalp out of SVW.