daytrading may 8 pre-market

Morning traders. Mini-wrap today:

Market wrap:

Fresh record highs on Wall Street have Australian shares pointing higher despite a mixed night on commodity markets.

With just under an hour of the night session left to trade, the June SPI 200 futures contract was ahead 24 points or nearly 0.5% at 5158 as the Dow closed above 15,000 for the first time and the S&P 500 pushed further into record territory.

A broad rally saw the S&P 500 advance nine points or 0.53% with nine out of ten sectors rising for a fourth straight positive close. The Dow put on 87 points or 0.58% to close at 15,056. The Nasdaq added 0.12%.

"This is a QE-fuelled market," the chief investment officer of a Lombard Odier Investment Management fund told Bloomberg. "You're just not seeing sales based on allocation into any other asset class because of the relative unattractiveness of everything other than equities. That's putting in place a firm bid to the equities market."

Oil: first loss in four sessions. West Texas Intermediate crude oil for June delivery down 54 cents or 0.6% to settle at US$95.62 a barrel.

Gold: settled near lowest price in a week. Gold for June delivery down $19.20 or 1.3% to settle at US$1,448.80 an ounce.

Base metals: US copper for July delivery was recently down 0.2% or less than a cent at US$3.30 a pound. In London, copper rose 0.15% and tin 2.7%. Aluminium dropped 0.9%, lead 0.3%, nickel 0.2% and zinc 0.6%.

Europe: the DAX hit an all-time high in Germany, rising 0.86%. France's CAC put on 0.36% and Britain's FTSE 0.54%.

TRADING THEMES TODAY

REBOUND: A broadly positive night as global markets welcomed Australia's rate cut. One negative: an index of gold/silver miners in the US fell 2.4%. There's no domestic economic data due today after yesterday's deluge, which included a market-friendly cut to the overnight cash rate. However, Chinese trade figures are due, exact time uncertain but normally around lunchtime EST.

ECONOMIC NEWS: No significant domestic news scheduled today. The monthly Chinese trade balance is due today, exact time uncertain. Europe releases German industrial production figures tonight. The light run of data in the US continues with crude oil inventories and a bond auction.

Good luck to all.