Daytrading Oct 16 afternoon

Half-time round-up:

The share market turned negative for the week following a volatile night on world markets and declines across Asia.

At lunchtime the ASX 200 was 34 points or 0.65% in the red at 5185 but on the mend after hitting a session low of 5162. A broad sell-off spared no sectors, with gold -0.1% and energy -0.1% the best of the sectors and IT -2.1%, metals & mining -1.9%, and materials -1.8% the worst.

The declines followed a volatile night on overseas markets, which included a 3.16% plunge in Europe's benchmark index, a 460-point intraday fall on the Dow and the largest fall on US bond yields in five years.

"What it all shows is fear is back in financial markets and on a scale that might have some investors thinking it’s 2008 all over again," the Australian Financial Review's Phil Baker told Fairfax. "Indeed, the one year price earnings ratio of the S&P 500 at the moment is 18 times, almost exactly where it was in August 2008 when Lehman Brother’s went bust."

China's Shanghai Composite declined 0.31%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.87% and Japan's Nikkei 2.13%. Dow futures were recently up 40 points or 0.25%.

Crude oil futures slid 67 cents this morning to US$80.98 a barrel. Spot gold was 10 cents stronger at US$1,244.90 an ounce. The dollar was buying 88.01 US cents.


The bears appeared to be in control for the first two hours, but the bulls have been able to muster rear-guard actions for the last three weeks. Picking off intraday price extremes in the mid-caps has been working well for me, overnight holds much less so. Trades this morning in SEK, TCL and MRM. Profit taken on one, ahead on another, stymied by an iceberg sell on the latter.