Thanks Endless. Half-time round-up:A fifth day of falls pushed...

Thanks Endless.

Half-time round-up:

A fifth day of falls pushed the Australian share market to a five-week low as the Nikkei's wild ride continued and retail stocks were hurt by weakening sales at David Jones.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 26 points or 0.5% weaker at 4957 but well above the session low of 4931. Property trusts +1.1%, energy +0.2% and telecoms +0.1% pared last week's heavy losses, but financials -0.7%, health -1% and utilities -0.8% continued to decline.

The consumer discretionary sector lost 1.4% after DJS reported third-quarter sales that were 2.2% down on the same quarter last year. The Small Ords dropped 1.4% to a 10-month low.

Market commentators attributed much of the selling in Australia to the diminishing appeal of high-dividend yields as the Australian dollar retreated. The dollar was lately buying 96.3 US cents.

"If the dollar does fall back to 90 [US] cents, as it appears to be, international clients will start to lose out on the differentials," IG Markets strategist Evan Lucas told MarketWatch. "Losing out in the currency pairs would see the shine in the trade tarnished."

Japan's Nikkei was recently down 3.12% after earlier falling nearly 4%. Shanghai rallied 0.11% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 0.09%. Floor trading in the US is suspended tonight for a public holiday, but Emini Dow futures were recently up two points or less than 0.1%.

Crude oil futures skidded 43 cents this morning to US$93.44 a barrel. Spot gold was $4.70 stronger at US$1,390.80 an ounce.


Not a convincing bounce this morning, but at least the index found support at the April 19 support level. The early falls looked overdone and offered some nice mid-cap entries. I took a couple of the second-tier telecoms in IIN and MTU but let both go waaaaay too soon. Similar story in IRE - hurts to look at how much I left on the table with those three. Also had a part-fill in BEN for peanuts and a barely-above-break-even in WSA after twice buying too early on the way down. Still, a good start to the week.