daytrading may 20 afternoon

Thanks Endless.

Half-time round-up:

The Australian share market has a new 58-month closing high within reach after a bullish end to last week on Wall Street fuelled a bright start to the Asian trading week.

The ASX 200 rallied 53 points or 1% this morning to 5233, erasing last week's losses and setting up the possibility of the index's strongest close since July 2008. The twin engines of the Australian market, the financials and resources sectors, both fired this morning, with the former advancing 1.4% as CBA hit a record and materials rising 1.2%.

"It's a question of a good lead from Wall Street and people buy on momentum," IG market strategist Chris Weston told Fairfax.

The gold sector slumped 1.7% to a four-and-a-half-year low as the price of gold skidded $12.10 this morning to US$1,348.10 an ounce. Telecoms -0.1% was the only other sector to lose ground.

Asian markets started the week strongly, although China continued to trail other regional markets. Shanghai edged up 0.27%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.66% and Japan's Nikkei put on 1.38%. Dow futures were recently up seven points or less than 0.1%.

Crude oil futures eased two cents this morning to US$95.97 a barrel. The dollar was buying 97.74 US cents.


This feels like the most bullish session in a few weeks and bodes well if the week's economic data plays nice. Even the goldies are off their morning lows to a greater or lesser extent. I've been guilty of a few schoolboy errors this past week, including failing to check for overnight corporate news before buying, not joining the dots with other market news and this morning failing to notice a buy order had executed. By the time I saw the confirmation in my in-box, the bounce I had in mind had been and gone. Dunce's cap on. Fared better elsewhere. Got a profit out of OGX after two attempts. Holding PBG at break-even.