Thanks Brit and morning regulars. Half-time round-up: Australian...

Thanks Brit and morning regulars.


Half-time round-up:

Australian shares outperformed regional peers this morning, paring a fourth day of losses as traders bought traditional defensive sectors.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was trading seven points or 0.1% in the red at 5559 but well clear of the morning low of 5538. Market heavyweight BHP helped stoke the turnaround by turning positive after opening at a six-month low. Also ahead were the gold sector +3.1%, property trusts +1.7% and health +0.2%. Small caps, financials, telecoms and consumer stocks all lost ground.

Asian markets were significantly weaker. China's Shanghai Composite fell 1.42%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 2.12% and Japan's Nikkei 0.74%. Dow futures were recently ahead five points or less than 0.1%.

“Share markets are likely to remain volatile as we are still going through a seasonally weak period of the year,” Shane Oliver, global strategist at AMP Capital Investors, gold Bloomberg. “Uncertainties remain regarding Chinese economic growth and a likely Fed interest rate hike lies ahead for later this year.”

Crude oil futures eased 19 cents or 0.4% this morning to US$47.95 a barrel. Spot gold was off $2.50 at US$1,097 an ounce. The dollar was buying 72.88 US cents.


Expectations are everything in trading. I've had several days to prepare to take a post-cap raising loss in LOM and therefore had no difficulty in pulling the trigger this morning. It's the sudden, unexpected losses that are hardest to take - the ones where you have no idea what is going wrong. Still, it's never fun to start the week with a big loss. Fortunately AGO offered a quick way to make back some of it. LNG appears to be another opportunity - close to the buy zone after three days of losses and has given bounces of 14-16 points on each of the last two sessions - I'm back in, intraday only.