Daytrading October 21 afternoon

Thanks Brit and morning regulars.


Half-time round-up:

Australian shares retreated for a second day in line with overnight weakness on Wall Street as traders waited for fresh catalysts as a global rebound faded.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was trading 34 points or 0.65% lower at 5201 with gains in resource stocks and small caps out-weighed by declines in the big banks and yield stocks. The gold sector improved 3.9%, metals & mining 0.8% and the Small Ordinaries 0.4%. Leading the declines were financials -1.3%, health -1.3% and IT -1.1%.

This morning's retreat mirrored minor losses in the US overnight as the quarterly earnings season continued to depress buyer interest after a near 9% rebound off the August low.

“We are back to levels you can’t get excited about,” Evan Lucas, market strategist at IG, told Bloomberg. “Until we get through the third quarter US earnings season and get some more clarity from the Fed, I can’t see any large moves in either direction now.”

China's Shanghai Composite retreated 0.19%. Japan's Nikkei gained 0.73%. Trade on Hong Kong's Hang Seng was suspended for a public holiday. Dow futures were recently up seven points or less than 0.1%.

Crude oil futures rebounded 29 cents this morning to US$45.84 a barrel. Spot gold was 20 cents firmer at US$1,177.70 an ounce. The dollar was buying 72.76 US cents.


The ASX is so poorly policed that now and then a trader can expect to get utterly stiffed. I began buying SKT this morning in the belief that - since there was no public announcement at the time to explain the selling - I was picking up a common or garden pullback. When I got suspicious enough to dig deeper I find that presentation slides from today's annual meeting appear to have been released to the market over in NZ, but not here. Bravo ASX. Slow hand clap. By the time the announcement was made here I was up to my neck. Haven't taken the loss yet, but suspect it will be a pretty deep cut. The pain will be offset to some extent by a decent rebound trade in ZIP. Also took CAR at support.