Thanks Brit and morning regulars. Half-time round-up: A second...

Thanks Brit and morning regulars.


Half-time round-up:

A second day of gains has pushed the ASX 200 above 5700 for the first time in a week as US equity futures turned bullish and retailers benefitted from budget incentives for small business.

At lunchtime the benchmark index was 25 points or 0.45% ahead at 5700 after earlier running as high as 5711, led by gains in gold +1.8%,  energy +1.4% and consumer staples +1.4%. The consumer discretionary sector rose 0.6% as traders pushed HVN and JBH to their highest levels in at least a year in anticipation that they will benefit from the federal government's small business spending package announced last night. Property trusts fell 0.6%, utilities 0.5% and materials 0.2%.

The market turned higher as US futures recovered from overnight weakness in US and European equity markets. Dow futures were recently up 36 points or 0.2%. China's Shanghai Composite eased 0.07%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.11% and Japan's Nikkei edged up 0.04%.

“Rising bond yields are making equities less attractive,” Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors, told Bloomberg. “Markets don’t go up in a straight line and after a while they get vulnerable to a pullback and this is what’s happening here. This is a correction and not the start of a bear market. We’re still seeing fairly constrained global growth and central banks are still running very easy monetary policies.”

Crude oil futures rallied 43 cents this morning to US$61.18 a barrel. Spot gold was 20 cents stronger at US$1,192.60 an ounce. The dollar was buying 79.79 US cents.


The market certainly seems to be in repair mode after a two-week freefall. Pause or base? Time will tell. Trading: I was too cynical to buy the AZK sales pitch this morning - always looked likely to get sold into, given the scale of the drop from the peak. Maybe if it gets cheap enough. Wanted DCC and NXR on pullback but didn't get either. Did get TIS at the low, which paid a wage.