daytrading feb 21 afternoon

Thanks Endless. Also Lap for this morning's kind words.

Half-time round-up:

Australian shares are on track for their biggest fall of the year after debate about quantitative easing in the US fuelled a sell-off in risk assets.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 65 points or 1.3% weaker at 5032 as traders dumped resource stocks and small caps. The gold sector tumbled 3.7% to its lowest level since January 2009. Energy stocks dropped 3.7%, metals & mining 3%, financials 1.2% and the Small Ordinaries 1.8%. The defensive telecoms and consumer staples were the only sectors to advance.

The falls followed the second-worst session of the year overnight on Wall Street after the Federal Reserve revealed serious internal divisions over the future of its bond-buying program.

"The Fed now is getting very nervous about the continuation of its quantitative easing program," Matthew Sherwood, head of investment market research at Perpetual Investments, told Bloomberg. "If they say they have to wind it down before the labour market stabilises, that would take one of the key supports away from the market."

Asian markets joined the retreat. Shanghai lost 1.38%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.35% and Japan's Nikkei 0.72%. Dow futures were recently up 15 points or more than 0.1%.

The sell-off in gold continued this morning, sending the spot price down another $5.30 to US$1,558.20 an ounce. Crude oil for April delivery, the new front-end contract, was at US$94.65 a barrel, down 57 cents or 0.6%. The dollar was buying $US1.0246.


Whee! Are we at the bottom yet? It's the correction we had to have. Felt like 2008 during the opening panic - ripe with opportunity to win or lose big. Goldies were hit hardest and that's where I concentrated my bargain-hunting, scooping up SLR, MML, AMX and RRL. Under-estimated how far some of those would fall and had to double up in several cases. Fortitude was severely tested during the first half-hour, but the bounces eventually came. Had a miss-step in FML - could have taken a pip's profit but hung out for two and may have missed the exit opp. More recently added AZY at 11c. If you're new to the market, hope you've come through okay. Days like this can be lucrative with the right approach. Worth studying where the opportunities were. Bet Cha has been busy this morning.