daytrading jan 20 afternoon

Thanks Endless.

Half-time round-up:

The share market is on track for its third straight winning week as regional shares this morning continued their best start to a year since 1988.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was up 20 points or 0.5% at 4235 with all sectors except defensive consumer staples, utilities and gold stocks making headway. Energy was the pick of the sectors, rising 1.1%, ahead of industrials and IT, both up 0.9%.

The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index rallied another 0.8% this morning to add to a 4.7% rise from the start of the year through to yesterday, the index's biggest New Year rally in 24 years, according to Bloomberg. Japan's Nikkei put on 1.19% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.31%. Shanghai inched up 0.08% ahead of this afternoon's manufacturing report.

"Everyone is breathing a collective sigh of relief as European bond yields come down and these bond auctions get out of the way," Angus Gluskie of White Funds Management told Bloomberg. "The US economic data is another bright spot. That's adding to the market momentum."

US futures were crimped by a mixed bag of earnings released after Wall Street closed this morning. Dow futures were recently off 8 points or less than 0.1%. Shares in Intel, Microsoft and IBM rallied in after-market trade after posting results, but shares in Google were marked down more than 9%.

Crude oil futures improved eight cents this morning to US$100.50 a barrel. Spot gold was $1.30 softer at US$1,656.10 an ounce. The dollar was buying US$1.0419.


The market keeps crawling higher, but 'crawling' feels like the operative word this morning. Not much evidence of irrational exuberance. I squeezed a day's wage out of CRB but that was it for new trades. Can feel an early mark coming on unless the Chinese manufacturing report in half an hour stirs the pot.