daytrades march 25 afternoon

Thanks Barnsty. Half-time round-up:

Shares were higher for the fifth day in six at lunchtime as regional markets followed Wall Street's positive overnight lead.

At 1 pm the ASX 200 was ahead 34 points or 0.7% at 4733 as a broad rally lifted all sectors bar property trusts. Resource stocks continued to thrive, driving the energy sector up 1.9%, gold stocks 1.3% and metals & mining +0.8%. Small caps continued to outperform blue chips, with the Small Ords up 1.1% and the S&P/ASX 20 up 0.8%.

"The major negatives on the market for the last few weeks are really looking like they are being put on the backburner," Australian Stock Report head of research Geoff Saffer told Fairfax. "It looks like the Libyan situation at least is going to be contained and there is hopes it will move to a resolution soon. The Japanese situation also seems like they are getting that under control."

Japan's Nikkei resumed its recovery after yesterday's minor wobble, rising 0.93% this morning. Shanghai rallied 0.29% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.13%. Dow futures were recently at a mildly bullish +19.

The dollar continued to hover near record highs this morning. The Aussie hit 102.29 US cents overnight, within striking distance of the record price of 102.56 US cents hit on New Years Day, and was recently trading at 102.04 US cents.

Crude oil futures rallied 34 cents this morning to $105.55 a barrel. Spot gold was $4.80 stronger at $1,432.80 an ounce.


This has been a fine week for buy-and-hold investing, rather than intraday trading, with a solid uptrend but low volumes and declining volatility. In other words, the stock market has been serving the purpose for which it was established. I'm normally lairy of trading any company that mentions solvency in a news release but CNP was too tempting in the low 6s. Ddecent scalps have been few this week but I didn't hang around long in it. A lousy part-fill in ABC delivered peanuts and I had a dabble in TCM on pullback. That's me done for the day - in keeping with the latest HC fashion, I'm off for a bike ride. HAGW all.