Australian shares are on track for a third losing week from four after the big banks led a downturn on the last trading day of the month.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 18 points or 0.35% weaker at 5315 as the market ignored positive US futures ahead of tonight's holiday-shortened session. Gains in the big miners were swamped by falls among financials -0.4%, industrials -0.7%, energy -1.4% and consumer stocks.
"I would expect trading movements to follow fund managers' book dressings rather than any specific news," Evan Lucas, market strategist at IG Ltd, told Bloomberg. "The fact volumes remain subdued in the fourth quarter and we are approaching seasonality issues with holidays, etc, [mean] price moves are likely to be thin and easily corrected if they look overdone."
US futures hinted at further gains tonight. Dow futures were recently up 44 points or nearly 0.3%. A subdued morning on Asian markets saw China's Shanghai Composite ease 0.03%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rise gain 0.16% and Japan's Nikkei drop 0.1%.
Spot gold eased $2.40 this morning to US$1,242.60 an ounce. Crude oil futures bounced 12 cents to US$92.37 a barrel. The dollar was buying 90.63 US cents.
What a week. GNC is not quite FGE but it will do until another FGE comes along. Got in shortly after the open. Sold too early - occupational hazard - but look forward to a nice bottle of vino collapso tonight to celebrate a very profitable week. Felt OSH was due a bounce after three days of selling but only a handful of pips in it so far - not enough to declare the trade a success. Also scalped CFU.
