The share market clung to a modest gain for the week despite a soft morning as investors sat on their hands ahead of tonight's speech by US Fed chief Janet Yellen.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was nine points or 0.2% lower for the session at 5533 but six points ahead for the week. The July rally has given way to three weeks of sideways drift as investors await fresh market catalysts. Trading volumes declined on Wall Street this week ahead of a speech tonight by the Chair of the US Federal Reserve.
"There certainly is a fear evident in markets that Janet Yellen is going to be surprisingly hawkish and talk up a September hike," IG market analyst Angus Nicholson told Fairfax. "This may be devoid of any real evidence apart from constant calls from the band of perma-hawk US economists, but, nonetheless, market liquidity has dried up in fear. Volumes have been down all week, while the volume on the S&P 500 overnight was more than 15 per cent below its 100-day moving average and the Dow Jones had volumes down more than 27 per cent."
Telecoms +1.3% was the best of the sectors, followed by gold +1.2% and materials +0.3%. Energy -0.5% and financials -0.5% were the biggest drags.
A mixed morning in Asia saw China's Shanghai Composite rally 0.42%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng add 0.7% and Japan's Nikkei drop 0.65%. Dow futures were recently up 11 points or 0.06%.
Crude oil futures drifted seven cents or 0.15% lower this morning to US$47.26 a barrel. Gold futures were $2.50 or 0.19% firmer at US$1.327.10 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.3 US cents.
Three weeks of ho-hum so far as the index is concerned, although there has been plenty going on under the bonnet. I've been trading pretty much every day for 13 odd years and I don't think I've seen anything like XPE - down 50% in two days on massive volume with no news. Not a whisper in the press, which suggests no one has a handle on it. I'll be disappointed if we don't find out some day what has gone on there. Trading: bought A3D well, sold prematurely. Half a pip from NOX. Not much to see here.
