The Australian share market is on track for its strongest close in a month as regional markets this morning chased an overnight surge on Wall Street.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was ahead by 35 points or 0.8% at 4298. A close at that level would be the highest since late February.
All sectors except utilities (-0.1%) advanced this morning, with the biggest rises coming in IT +2.3%, gold +1.4% and financials +1.1%. The gains followed a speech last night by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke which implied that the central bank will keep pumping money into the US economy for some time to come.
"There's going to be a lot of liquidity provided for the market and economy," Stephen Halmarick of investment markets research at Colonial First State Global Asset Management told Bloomberg. "Equity investors are taking it in a positive way."
Asian markets jumped this morning. Japan's Nikkei surged 1.64%, Shanghai 0.31% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 1.35%. Dow futures were recently up five points or less than 0.1%.
Crude oil futures eased 12 cents this morning to US$106.98 a barrel. Spot gold was $3.90 softer at US$1,689 an ounce. The dollar was buying US$1.0525.
The bulls are running. Pity our market is limping along at the rear. What it will take to break this endless sideways trading range? Still, there were plenty of trading opportunities this morning. I caught THR on retrace to 3.1, scalped AGS (commiserations to holders) and took a couple of pips out of BLD.
