The ASX shook off early losses to reach the halfway point little changed as traders applauded Woolworth's decision to offload its troubled hardware business.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was two points or less than 0.1% lower at 5560 after earlier sliding as low as 5536 after Wall Street dipped on concerns that US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen may use a speech tomorrow night to flag higher rates. A 6.4% surge in WOW drove the consumer staples sector up 3% and helped offset declines in gold -3.1%, metals & mining -1.6% and IT -1.5%. Also positive were utilities +1.1% and consumer discretionary +0.4%.
"The [US] market over the past several weeks has been in a holding pattern, really not doing much of anything and the reason for that is everyone is waiting to hear what Yellen is going to say," Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial in the US, told Fairfax. "Of course the markets might get surprised. The markets are looking for clarity and we might not get clarity."
China's Shanghai Composite declined 0.92%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.01% and Japan's Nikkei 0.25%. Dow futures were recently ahead by ten points or 0.05%.
Crude oil futures edged up two cents or 0.04% this morning to US$46.79 a barrel. Gold futures were $1.20 or 0.1% softer at US$1,328.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.23 US cents.
Trading: I'm caught up in the XPE car-wreck, which has has seriously dampened my enthusiasm for taking on more risk, at least until I crawl out from under the wreckage and get my wounds bandaged, maybe a limb or two sewn back on. My present situation is upside down and hanging from the seatbelt. If I undo the seatbelt I'll land on my head, which may not be a problem since I haven't been using it. Took on some more risk this morning at 3.1c (hooray) and 3.6c (boo). If today isn't capitulation day, I'm not going to enjoy tomorrow. Either way, I doubt I'll sell until next Tuesday at the earliest, since any rebound will take time to churn through these extraordinary volumes. Looked away from that share long enough to get a few pips out of GGG but missed the vertical run, dammit.
