Daytrading March 11 afternoon

Thanks Brit and morning crew. Cheers Jim for yesterday's half-time wrap and generous rap - you're a gent and a trooper.


Half-time round-up:

Australian shares edged towards a second weekly gain despite a losing morning as investors fretted over the ability of central banks to move markets after an ECB stimulus misfire.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 11 points or 0.2% weaker at 5139, but almost 5o points ahead for the week. Leading the retreat were the energy sector -1.2%, telecoms -1.1% and materials -0.4%. Cushioning the fall were gains in gold +3.5%, IT +0.9% and property trusts +0.5%.

This morning's retreat followed a mixed close in the US and heavy falls in Europe after the European Central Bank announced fresh stimulus measures but undermined the message by declaring an end to rate cuts. The Stoxx Europe 600 slumped 1.66%, Germany's DAX 2.31% and France's CAC 1.7%.

“Markets did not like this news,” Matthew Sherwood, head of investment strategy at Perpetual, told Bloomberg. “The ECB pulled out its bazooka overnight and unleashed a bold package of stimulus which exceeded or met expectation on every count, but then the ECB president in his news conference suggested that there would not be deeper cuts to negative regional deposit rates, which seemingly limits the extent to which the ECB can use policy to lower the euro.”

“You could see that the ECB has dealt all the cards that it could,” Norihiro Fujito, general manager of Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Japan added. “The ECB’s monetary stimulus package went above expectations and delivered the full course. But the market moved in the other direction, and they’ve now proved how monetary policy alone will have limited impact.”

Asian markets retreated. China's Shanghai Composite dipped 0.59%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.05% and Japan's Nikkei 0.99%. Dow futures were recently ahead 29 points or 0.16%.

Crude oil futures rebounded 37 cents or 1% this morning to US$38.21 a barrel. Spot gold was $4.30 firmer at US$1,277.10 an ounce. The dollar was buying 74.72 US cents.


Been a directionless sort of week on the index but with just enough of last week's upward bias to maintain the uptrend. Lost momentum but noodled higher. Crude is on the rise this morning, which may bode well for next week.Next week will be telling. Weekly chart suggests we're sitting at the upper band of the prevalent downtrend since last April. Trading: placed a lot of buy orders before finally getting filled in AHF, RRL and CGF. Profits taken on the first two. Not overly optimistic about the latter.