Thanks Oscar and morning crew. Half-time round-up: A 'risk-off'...

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

A 'risk-off' session on commodity and currency markets and US equity futures capped a tentative ASX rebound from three days of heavy selling.  

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 11 points or 0.2% ahead at 5295 as institutional traders applied lipstick to a losing month. Barring an upsurge this afternoon, the benchmark index looked on course to end October with a loss of at least 130 points.

Crude oil, US futures and the Australian dollar declined and gold rallied after weekend developments threw the US presidential election result back into doubt. Polls showed Donald Trump closed the gap on Hillary Clinton following news that the FBI have reopened its investigation into private emails sent by the Democrat Party candidate.

“Until the election, the general theme will be uncertainty, which will have implications not just on the stock market, but on the dollar and Treasuries,” Chad Morganlander, money manager at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co in the US, told Bloomberg. “The probability that was factored into the market and the global financial system was a Hillary Clinton victory - investors now need to square their books going into the election based on whatever new odds come out.”

Dow futures were recently off 26 points or 0.14%.  Crude oil futures slid 21 cents or 0.43% this morning to US$48.49 a barrel. Gold futures pared stronger early gains to lately trade $1.40 or 0.11% firmer at US$1,278.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.93 US cents.

China's Shanghai Composite retreated 0.39%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.63% and Japan's Nikkei 0.64%.

Gold was the pick of the Australian sectors, rising 3%. Metals & mining gained 1.3%, industrials 1% and utilities 1%. Energy slumped 1%, IT 1% and financials 0.3%.


The fundies will do their best to push the index higher through to the close. This is serious: bonuses may be at stake. On any other day but the last of the month you would have to think we'd be on our way down with the rest of Asia. May see some rebalancing tomorrow, depending on how seriously Wall Street takes the news that the presidential election is suddenly a two-horse race again. Trading: would have been a fine morning for bounce trading if only a few more bounces had turned up. Got something out of RFX and RCG, but I'd sorely welcome some more buying in SMA and SRO.