A global flight from yield stocks helped pull the ASX lower for a second day following a flat night on Wall Street as the 'Trump rally' ran out of steam.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 33 points or 0.6% lower at 5312 as falls in health -1.6%, consumer staples -1%, telecoms -0.9% and utilities -0.8% outweighed rises in the gold sector +0.8%, energy +0.8% and consumer discretionary +0.3%.
Wall Street stuttered overnight following its best week in three years as traders snapped up sectors they expect to benefit from a Trump presidency. The S&P 500 closed flat.
“Risks are elevated, and we are expecting further increases in volatility as markets attempt to second-guess the policies that might eventually come out from the US,” Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, told Bloomberg. “One of the challenges for markets is that all of these moves are not straightforward in terms of impact. In a lot of cases, we just have to see how things play out.”
A mixed morning in Asia saw China's Shanghai Composite little changed at +0.02%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng up 0.72% and Japan's Nikkei down 0.14%. Dow futures were recently up 18 points or 0.1%.
Crude oil futures rebounded 52 cents or 1.2% this morning to US$43.84 a barrel. Gold futures were $5.70 or 0.57% stronger at US$1,227.50 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.75 US cents.
Trading: caught the rebound in ACX and took a speculator in IFN when it neared round-number support. Coulda shoulda had a few more if I didn't have the sort of brain that instead of focussing on trading squanders 45 minutes checking out whatever happened to some dodgy old band I saw in a draughty hall in 1984 (answer: probably on supermarket checkouts/building sites in Sunderland and Bolton).
