Thanks Endless. Half-time round-up:Australian shares are on...

Thanks Endless.

Half-time round-up:

Australian shares are on track for a winning week despite a soft morning as China's official manufacturing report disappointed and the US braced for US$85 billion in government spending cuts.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 22 points or 0.4% weaker for the day at 5081 but set to finish the week more than 1% stronger than Monday's open. Financials and consumer staples were the only sectors to resist the downtrend, both rising 0.3%. Resource stocks led the rout, with gold falling 2.9%, metals & mining 1.4% and energy 1.3%.

The declines followed an overnight reversal in US stocks after Congress knocked back two bills aimed at softening a round of automatic federal spending cuts.

"The sequestration in the US could result in jitters in the short-term," Nader Naeimi, head of dynamic asset allocation at AMP Capital, told Bloomberg. "Even though fundamentally the spending cuts will have quite a small impact on the US economy, it will have a psychological effect on the markets since it is happening at a time Europe is starting to look shaky after the Italian elections."

The market quickly shook off any concerns over China's manufacturing sector after the official February purchasing managers' index came in near stalling speed. The PMI dropped to 50.1 from 50.4. Economists had anticipated a reading around 50.5. The final version of HSBC's rival index came in at 50.4, as anticipated.

The Shanghai Composite slipped 0.05%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.27% and Japan's Nikkei 0.25%. Dow futures were more optimistic, recently up 43 points or 0.3%.

Crude oil futures sagged another 24 cents this morning to US$91.67 a barrel. Spot gold clawed back $3.20 to US$1,582.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying $US1.0218.


Choppy old morning, but the buy-the-dip crowd still hold the field. Those positive US futures are obviously helping, but I haven't found any obvious reason why they're so cheerful. Might be to do with this? Meanwhile, I continued to wrestle with the bugs in the Java 7 version of CommSec Iress. Don't understand how some software gets out the door - is there really no trialling before launch? Despite the challenges, I managed decent bounces in WRT and ROC. Shaken out of POS for brokerage and still hold SFR and AMC from near the lows. The SIR open was too rich for my blood, so I stood aside.