The Australian share market reached the halfway point of the session unchanged as the big miners pared sharp early falls and gold stocks shrugged off weakness in the metal.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was flat at 5527 after yesterday closing less than ten points off a six-year high. Telecoms +0.7%, industrials +0.4%, consumer staples +0.3% and gold +0.1% were the pick of the sectors. The metals & mining sector was off 1.1% but improving after touching a one-week low.
The recovery followed a morning of mixed domestic economic data and predictions that Wall Street will shrug off what is likely to be a weak Q1 GDP reading tonight.
"Investors will probably blame the weather or seasonality if we get a bad GDP print from the US," Scott Schuberg, chief executive officer of Rivkin Securities, told Bloomberg. "There’s still enough willingness from the Federal Reserve to intervene if a bad print comes out."
Back home, business expenditure slumped a worse-than-expected 4.2% over the first three months of the year, but the dollar rallied as traders found positives beneath the weak headline number. Economists had predicted a retreat of 1.6%. The dollar was buying 92.7 US cents.
Sales of new homes improved for a fourth straight month, increasing 2.9% in April.
Asian markets were little changed. China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.01%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added a more convincing 0.48% and Japan's Nikkei was down 0.05%. Dow futures were recently up four points or less than 0.1%.
Crude oil futures eased another 14 cents this morning to US$102.94 a barrel. Spot gold was $2.50 weaker at US$1,256.80 an ounce.
Well-behaved thread this morning. Kudos to all who managed to share their thoughts without insulting previous posters. It's not that hard, really. Trading: scratchy this morning. I would be sitting on a nice profit from RNI, but for the Chi-X rort that allows the instos to avoid buying from the plebs. Currently awaiting the second coming. Got a few peanuts out of KDL, but no more than that.
