Daytrading April 22 afternoon

Thanks Brit and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

Stocks retreated from a 15-week high before staging a partial recovery as US equity futures shrugged off after-market earning disappointments from Microsoft and Google ahead of a long weekend in Australia.  

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 24 points or 0.45% weaker at 5249 and threatening its first loss in four sessions despite bouncing more than 20 points off a session low of 5226. The index has rallied more than 300 points over the last fortnight amid signs that the Chinese economy is improving and the US Federal Reserve is in no rush to raise rates.

The S&P 500 dipped 0.5% overnight amid concerns about a lacklustre quarterly earnings. Index futures were lately up 1.5 points or 0.07% despite negative after-market reactions to quarterly earnings from Microsoft and Google parent company Alphabet. Read more here.

“There’s been scant evidence of sustained earnings growth,”  Matthew Sherwood, head of investment strategy at Perpetual, told Bloomberg. “It’s too soon to declare that the earnings recession is over in all regions - things look better in the US, but central-bank policy in Europe and Japan appears increasingly deflationary and the prospect for strong economic recovery in emerging markets is still hard to fathom.”

Asian markets reflected the downbeat global tone. China's Shanghai Composite eased 0.37%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.8% and Japan's Nikkei 0.09%.

The metals & mining sector led the Australian retreat, falling 1.6%. Also weak were utilities -1.5%, consumer discretionary -1.1% and industrials -0.7%. The gold sector rallied 1.25%.

Crude oil futures improved 60 cents or 1.4% this morning to US$43.78 a barrel. Gold futures were $2.30 or 0.1% stronger at US$1,251.60 an ounce. The dollar was buying 77.7 US cents.


Market is due a breather, but as pauses go, today looks bullish - big bounce off the low, considering Wall Street will trade twice before we resume on Tuesday. No evidence in US futures yet that there is much concern about this morning's quarterly updates. Trading: am about to take off for the long weekend and therefore entered the day over-cautious and got what that deserved: nothing. Have a good one, all. See you on the other side.