Thanks Oscar and morning crew. Half-time round-up: The share...

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

The share market reversed with crude oil as a rally in the US dollar sucked money out of other investment classes.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 39 points or 0.7% weaker at 5392 and on track for a second day of losses after the greenback this morning marked a fresh eight-month high. Gold and crude both declined alongside Australian equities, but US futures remained resilient.

Crude oil futures retreated 21 cents or 0.41% to US$50.64 a barrel. Gold futures shed $3.50 or 0.28% to US$1,264.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.08 US cents.

Dow futures were recently three points or 0.02% higher. China's Shanghai Composite improved 0.03%, but Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.41% and Japan's Nikkei gave up 0.09%.

The health sector led the retreat, falling 2%, followed by gold -1.4%, consumer discretionary -1.3% and energy -1.2%.

US corporate earnings and third-quarter US GDP are expected to dominate trading this week, ahead of a run of central bank meetings next week.

"It will be something of a hiatus week, given that next week brings the BoJ, Fed and BoE meetings,"Marc Ostwald, strategist at ADM Investor Services, told Reuters. "However there is a heavily back-loaded run of data in the US, Japan and Eurozone, and there will be a deluge of US and indeed European and Asian corporate earnings."


XJO seems to have peaked short-term and lapsed into the sort of rounding top that tends to lead to a sharp drop. No urgency about it yet - will likely take a few weeks to play out. Trading: short on excitement. Scraped something out of CCP, which is the sort of trade I find myself in when I can't find a trade. Watching a few.