daytrading april 8 afternoon

Thanks Lioness. Well done for stepping up.

Half-time round-up:

Shares declined for a second day before trimming losses as key Asian markets opened higher and US futures improved ahead of the launch of a new earnings season tonight.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 10 points or 0.2% weaker at 5403 with gains in gold +0.8%, metals & mining +0.4% and utilities +0.3% helping offset declines in I.T. -1.4%, consumer discretionary -1.2%, industrials -0.6% and financials -0.3%. The declines followed a tech-led slump in the US over the last few weeks.

"When the tech sector in the States goes pear-shaped the Australian market is pretty immune given its heavy weighting toward financial services and materials stocks," Rivkin global investment manager Tim Radford told Fairfax.

The market shrugged off a drop in business confidence. NAB's business survey showed confidence fell to +4 last month from +7 in February. Conditions improved from zero to +1 in March.

China's Shanghai Composite rallied 0.61% upon re-opening following yesterday's public holiday. Hong Kong's Hang Seng bounced 0.55% and Japan's Nikkei retreated 1.14% ahead of a Bank of Japan rate decision. Dow futures were recently up 26 points or nearly 0.2%. Former Dow component Alcoa is due to mark the unofficial start of a new quarterly reporting season at the close of regular trade tomorrow morning, Australian time.

Crude oil futures rebounded 46 cents this morning to US$100.90 a barrel. Spot gold was $1 firmer at US$1,299 an ounce. The dollar was buying 92.78 US cents.


Aside from momentum plays like CZI, there have been good opportunities in these conditions simply buying at support and waiting for the market to turn higher, as it has done fairly consistently intraday for the last three weeks. It's not full-proof (is anything?) but worked well lately. Wins this morning in FXJ, ADO, MAD and XRO (needed two swings on latter). Still holding PTM and CDB.