Thanks for stepping in this morning Suzie. Half-time...

Thanks for stepping in this morning Suzie.

Half-time round-up:

Australian shares are on track for their first losing week in six after regional markets joined a global pullback.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was down 35 points or 0.8% at 4348 with all sectors bar gold (+0.5%) and telecoms (+0.4%) trading in the red. Commodity stocks led the retreat, with the metals & mining sector losing 1.8%, materials 1.7% and energy stocks 1.2%. The index has risen for the last five weeks but was lately trading more than 20 points below last Friday's close.

Asian markets retreated as investors reassessed a rally that earlier this week pushed a regional index to its strongest level since May. Japan's Nikkei lost 1.1%, Shanghai 0.58% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.16%. Dow futures were recently up 14 points or 0.1%.

"The rally seems to have been a bit more about hope over reality," the head of investment markets research at Colonial First State Global Asset Management told Bloomberg. "Clearly economic data has been pretty poor. The practicalities of what needs to be done to address this are huge."

Meanwhile, Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said this morning he sees no sign the mining boom is over, despite a slump in the price of iron ore under US$100 per tonne overnight. Mr Stevens said he expected the boom to peak in the next year or two.

Crude oil futures dropped another 22 cents this morning to US$95.78 a barrel. Spot gold was $6.40 softer at US$1,666.40 an ounce. The dollar was buying $US1.044.


A tricky morning offering plenty of opportunities to lose money. I've been seizing too many of those lately. If this was an NRL club I'd be playing Toyota Cup this weekend. Down on ARI and MGX, although I scalped the latter twice this morning and used the profits to reduce my original position. Also scalped KDR from the low. Started to build a short-term position in FXJ, but not in in any rush. Gina seems to be on a suicide mission and one person's hubris is often another's gain.