Thanks Brit and morning crew. Half-time round-up: The ASX looks...

Thanks Brit and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The ASX looks on track for its first losing week in three as caution set in ahead of a US jobs report that is expected to set the tone for global markets next week.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 36 points or 0.7% weaker at 4944 and likely to pare yesterday's dramatic 104-point surge. Resource stocks bucked the downtrend as further overnight weakness in the US dollar helped commodity prices. The gold sector rallied 3.9%, metals & mining 3.2%, materials 2.1% and I.T. 0.4%. Leading the declines were the consumer discretionary sector -2%, consumer staples -1.9% and energy -1.5%. The financials sector dropped 1.2%.

US futures were mildly positive ahead of tonight's January employment report, which is expected to show weaker growth than December's unexpectedly strong 292,000 surge. Dow futures were recently up 17 points or 0.1%.

“Expectations are growing by the day that the Fed will not hike again this year given the weaker growth picture and tightening financial conditions,” Jason Wong, currency strategist at Bank of New Zealand, told Bloomberg. “The key release is US employment data overnight, which is expected to show some payback in employment growth in January.”

China's Shanghai Composite dipped 0.21%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 1.01% and Japan's Nikkei lost 1.14%.

Crude oil futures rose nine cents this morning to US$31.81 a barrel. Spot gold was $3.20 softer at US$1,154.30 an ounce. The dollar was buying 71.97 US cents.


Feels like this has been a long week. Things are so slow that the highlight is PWN going for a run. Suggests the market is running out of pump ideas. If things get any slower I'll start to miss GCN and its touching faith in the market-moving power of Jermaine Jackson. Trading: long wait for an entry, but ACX finally fell far enough for a decent bounce. APN looks marginally overdone. Also took PLS.