daytrading nov 22 afternoon

Thanks Endless.

Half-time round-up:

Australian stocks this morning staged their biggest rally since late July as Japanese shares hit a six-month high and Chinese manufacturing expanded for the first time in a year.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 52 points or 1.2% ahead at 4221 after earlier running as high as 4428. A broad rally lifted all sectors, led by gains in industrials +1.7%, IT +1.7% and telecoms +1.5%.

"We are seeing a follow-through from the US equities markets, which were up last night on very low volume," Rochford Capital director Derek Mumford told Fairfax. "There's also some positive sentiment as far as the Greek settlement goes. Obviously there are a lot of things going on in Australia, but the bigger issues seem to be outside our borders in the US, China, Japan and Europe."

The market hit its high before the 12.45pm EST release of Chinese manufacturing figures that showed the first expansion in HSBC's preliminary PMI in 12 months. The flash PMI improved to 50.4 this month from 49.5 last month, the index's first push above the 50-point level since October last year.

Asian markets were mixed despite the Chinese data. Shanghai lost 0.5%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng put on 0.43% and Japan's Nikkei advanced 1.17% to its highest level since early May. Dow futures were recently ahead 27 points or 0.2%.

Crude oil futures relaxed five cents this morning to US$87.60 a barrel. Spot gold was $3.10 stronger at US$1,731.90 an ounce. The dollar was buying $US1.0395.


Boom, what a morning. Pity most of the fireworks were at the top end of the market. The speccies have been soft lately but a few more sessions like this should bring in some buying. Great to see the Chinese PMI back above 50. The Shanghai Composite has been faltering for a few weeks now and was weak before the manufacturing data came out. One trade for me so far but it was good for a day's wage - TOX from the low.