The Australian share market pared three days of losses this morning as Asian markets took their cues from a bright night in the US and Europe.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 51 points or 1% stronger at 5083, reversing around half of the index's decline since Tuesday. A broad rally lifted all sectors except gold -0.5%. The biggest gains came in IT +1.9%, consumer staples +1.7%, health +1.6% and energy +1.3%.
"Growing optimism about the US economy pushes markets up, even though concerns about China continue to linger," Matthew Sherwood, head of investment markets research at Perpetual Investments, told Bloomberg.
The Shanghai Composite eased 0.3%,but Hong Kong's Hang Seng put on 0.21% and Japan's Nikkei added 0.63%. Dow futures were recently off one point or less than 0.1%.
Crude oil futures rallied six cents this morning to US$93.12 a barrel. Spot gold firmed $3.40 to US$1,591.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying $US1.0379.
Nice to finish the week with a strong rally after spilling a bit of claret this week. A 114-point drop in three days seemed a bit much while Wall Street kept making record highs. Still, I was a wallflower for most of the morning. Spent the session trying to get a boogie with someone - anyone - but only made it onto the dance-floor once. That was SYR. AYN looked desperate for attention, but I thought "What would Endless say?" So I stayed away. Endless disapproves of us keeping bad company.
