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

Thanks Lioness and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The ASX skidded towards a second straight weekly loss as overnight weakness in commodities crunched resource stocks ahead of several weeks of so-called 'risk events'.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 54 points or 1% weaker at 5308, near the bottom of the index's recent trading range. The index would need to close above  5319 to avoid a second weekly decline. Resource stocks accounted for most of the weakness, with the metals & mining sector down 2.6%, materials 2.5% and energy 1.5%. Defensive sectors bucked the downtrend, including gold +0.7%, utilities +0.1% and telecoms +0.1%.

Asian markets followed Wall Street lower as commentators predicted a retrace on global markets ahead of central bank meetings next week and the UK's referendum on remaining in Europe the following week. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 0.37% and Japan's Nikkei 0.49%. Dow futures were recently off 18 points or 0.1%.

“Ahead of the Fed and BOJ next week, and the vote on Brexit the week after, no one wants to take risk today,” Juichi Wako, senior strategist at Nomura Holdings in Tokyo, told Bloomberg.

“With the market being priced where it’s at, there’s not a lot of room for air,” Jim Davis, regional investment manager at the Private Client Reserve of US Bank, added. “I would not be surprised to see it back off a little more in the next week. The market has to navigate some choppy waters between now and mid-July.”

Crude oil futures eased 12 cents or 0.24% this morning to US$50.44 a barrel. Gold futures were $3.20 or 0.25% weaker at US$1,269.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 74.18 US cents.


I got to thinking this morning about the churn rate on these threads and the many traders who have come and gone in the decade or more I've been using HotCopper. If you go back to the founding of the day trading forum in 2008, I couldn't say how many are still here but it doesn't feel like a crowd. We could probably hold the reunion in a phone box. It's a tough game. Of those who are still here, I'd guess humility would be one of the defining characteristics, because being able to admit mistakes and act on that knowledge promptly is the key to survival. Once you know how to survive, you just might start to make money. Trading is a great leveller. You can be the smartest, richest, handsomest guy in the room and still do your dough.  Whatever your weaknesses, the market will find them out. If I had to propose a team song for the Day Trading threads, it might be this gem from the cricket-loving Duckworth Lewis Method. The music is MOR [NB: not a share code], but the lyric is spot on.



Trading: LNG, obviously, plus ISX and NXT. Been a good week.