Thanks Brit and morning regulars. Nice open, Brit - thank you....

Thanks Brit and morning regulars. Nice open, Brit - thank you.


Half-time round-up:

Australian shares attempted to rally for a second day before fading mid-session as Asian markets shrugged off Chinese stimulus measures.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 27 points or 0.5% weaker at 5136 after running as high as 5142 before Chinese shares stuttered. IT +0.8% and materials +0.1% were the pick of the sectors. Gold -2.1% and telecoms -1% were the biggest drags.

Chinese shares rallied briefly before fading towards another loss despite a string of measures announced in the last 24 hours to boost the economy. The Shanghai Composite was lately down 2.25% after trading as much as 1.2% higher in choppy action. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was off 0.63% and Japan's Nikkei up 0.4%. Dow futures were recently down 59 points or 0.4%.

"Monetary easing may be effective in prompting buy-back in 'oversold' risk assets but it is not enough to brighten the economic outlook, which market players are concerned about," Makoto Noji, senior rates strategist at SMBC Nikko Securities, told Reuters. "When China is curtailing excessive investments, monetary stimulus would not boost China's demand much. Rather if it ends up weakening the yuan, it would fuel competition in devaluation. There's no wonder US stocks have lost steam."


Crude oil futures retraced ten cents this morning to US$39.21 a barrel. Spot gold was $1.10 weaker at US$1,137.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying 71.23 US cents.


Pessimism prevails. Interesting how quickly attitudes have become overwhelmingly gloomy. That appears to strengthen the bullish case because when everyone expects one outcome, the market inevitably does the opposite. Probably not today, however. The index had a good go at a rally but needed some sort of support out of Asia to hold the gains - can't go it alone day after day. US futures and Hong Kong followed Shanghai lower. Trading: I took a quick measure of the market in the opening minutes by watching a few favourite mid-caps to see how they went - once it was obvious they were opening low and then rallying, the scramble was on to find similar trades. Only snagged two - EGP and TAH, but both responded well to that opening theme. Nothing like the profits of the last two days, but worthwhile. Also took TZN but it appears to be a sleepwalker.