Daytrading April 8 afternoon

Thanks for the goal-line save this morning, Jim. Very hard to find reliable staff in Queensland.


Half-time round-up:

Australian shares headed towards a third straight weekly loss despite a partial rebound after the benchmark index touched a five-week low this morning.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 33 points or 0.7% in the red at 4931 but more than 35 points off its session low after hitting 4893 in the first half hour of trade. The financial sector pared its loss to 1.3% and metals & mining to 0.2%. Gold stocks rallied 2.3%, utilities 0.3% and health 012%. The index has been in decline since the February rebound topped out at 5216 in the middle of last month.

“We are seeing central bank fatigue,” Niv Dagan, executive director at Peak Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “We’re definitely moving to a risk-off scenario and there’s been a strong flight to safety. Investors are cautious and are extremely nervous that global central bank intervention won’t actually stimulate growth in the economy.”

China's Shanghai Composite gave up 1.15%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.82% and Japan's Nikkei 0.57%. Dow futures were recently ahead 15 points or 0.09%.

Crude oil futures jumped 68 cents or 1.8% this morning to US$37.94 a barrel. Gold futures were $1.10 or 0.1% firmer at US$1,238.60 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.33 US cents.


Nice recovery this morning, but the downtrend on the index remains intact for now. Be nice if it respected the late-Feb low, but a return to 4800 has to be a worrying possibility with Wall Street only just starting to come off its high. Trading: this has not been a week I'll hang in the pool room. Struggled through the first half of the week, butchered 88E yesterday and barely squeezed anything out of MOD this morning. My part-fills this morning - BPL, HVN - came good but the quantities were peanuts. SFR was the only win of any note for the second time this week. Hooray for the weekend.