Thanks Brit and morning regulars.
Half-time round-up:
Australian shares unwound yesterday's gains before improved domestic jobs and Chinese inflation figures helped the market pares losses.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was trading 117 points or 2.2% lower at 5104 after earlier falling as far as 5089 after fear of a rate hike helped push Wall Street sharply lower overnight. The benchmark index surged 106 points yesterday, its second day of robust gains as fears of a Chinese stock market meltdown diminished.
A broad retreat sent all sectors lower this morning, with the biggest hits landing on energy -3.3%, gold -2.5%, property trusts -2.5%, financials -2.4% and metals & mining -2.3%. At -0.4%, IT was the best of the bunch.
“Markets will remain volatile until the [US Federal Reserve policy] meeting next week,” Nader Naeimi, head of dynamic asset allocation at AMP Capital Investors, told
Bloomberg. “Investors are again focusing on the potential US interest rate increase and how it would impact emerging markets.”
The dollar pared declines following the 11.30am EST release of Australian employment data and Chinese inflation statistics, lately buying 70 US cents after trading almost half a cent lower. The economy added 17,400 jobs last month, more than three times the number economists expected. The increase helped push the jobless rate down to 6.2% from 6.3% in July.
Read more here.
Consumer inflation ticked up more than expected in China last month. The consumer price index was 2% higher than a year ago, versus expectations of a rise to 1.9% from a July reading of 1.6%.
Asian markets gave back some of yesterday's gains. China's Shanghai Composite fell 1.18%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 2.28% and Japan's Nikkei 2.91%. Dow futures were recently down 20 points or more than 0.1%.
Crude oil futures eased another six cents this morning to US$44.09 a barrel. Spot gold bounced $4.30 to US$1,106.30 an ounce.
This morning's discussion about the current merits of the day trading threads got me thinking. For what it's worth, this has always been a highly fluid and unstable group. People have come and gone regularly since the launch in 2008. The overall quality has ebbed and flowed a bit, but I don't have a sense that the current crop of regulars is significantly worse than what has gone before. Frankly, the thread has always been a mix of the useful, the users and the useless. We've had and lost some truly wonderful posters and great characters, but there is always fresh blood coming through. I've been trying to come up with a better metaphor than Fleetwood Mac, but haven't. Some people like the original line-up, some prefer the 'Rumours' line-up, others some of the variations before and after. As for what happened to the old 'band members', some made enough money to retire, some likely did their dough and some got banned. A lot simply got bored or decided they didn't need the hassle that comes with a profile. I'm Mick Fleetwood - I like it here and will keep drumming until I think of something better to do. Trading: been chipping away at mid-caps trading near support. It's not glamorous or lucrative, but it adds up to a wage. Got something out of APN. Narrowly ahead on SXL, SDF and AZJ.
