daytrades march 30 afternoon

Thanks Barnsty. Barely been able to read anything on HC this morning, so hope this posts successfully.

Half-time round-up: A broad rally this morning boosted local shares to a three-week high.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was ahead 47 points or 1% at 4802, with all sectors trading stronger. Resource stocks topped the sector gains following overnight rallies in oil and metals, with gold stocks up 2.8%, metals & mining +1.7% and materials +1.6%.

Small caps trailled the blue chips as institutional traders adjusted their portfolios ahead of the end of the quarter. The Small Ordinaries was up 0.6%, compared to a 1.1% jump in the S&P/ASX 20.

The dollar was hovering near record levels after touching a new high of $US 1.0318 overnight. The Aussie was recently buying US $1.0292.

"The higher the dollar goes, the poorer it is for some of the companies with offshore earnings," Macquarie Private Wealth division director Lucinda Chan told Fairfax. "That probably will have some negative impact on us, but we will see what happens."

Japan's Nikkei added 0.96% this morning, Shanghai 0.24% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.28%. Dow futures were recently at +1.

Crude oil futures eased 27 cents this morning to $104.44 a barrel. Spot gold was $2.90 softer at $1,416.10 an ounce.


Pretty typical end-of-quarter trade, with the action switching to the big end of town. Hard to cash in on that without having serious cash or using leverage and having BOS to handle significant exposure. I stuck to my knitting, lol. Caught some of the bounce in JPR and squeezed a profit out of ICN - thought there might be more in it but the volume has faded. Story of the week.