A region-wide retreat dragged Australian shares lower for the first time in five sessions as US equity futures remained downbeat following Friday's Wall Street sell-off.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 15 points or 0.3% weaker at 5416, with slim gains in gold +0.4%, IT +0.4% and consumer discretionary +0.2% outweighed by declines in consumer staples -1.3%, health -0.9%, telecoms -0.7% and financials -0.3%.
US equity futures traded mildly negative after a downturn on Friday ahead of tonight's US presidential debate. Dow futures were recently off 38 points or 0.21%.
"Polls have noticeably tightened in Trump's favour over the past few weeks, and there is an open question whether his strong debate performances in the Republican primaries will work against Clinton," Angus Nicholson, market analyst at IG, told Fairfax. "Although a "good" performance by Trump could see a rally in safe haven assets, JGBs/yen, gold, German bunds, and that further yield compression conversely may actually assist long duration "riskier" assets such as EMs, high yield bonds and US equities."
Oil staged a partial rebound from Friday's sharp sell-off. Crude oil futures bounced 27 cents or 0.61% this morning to US$44.75 a barrel. Gold futures were $3.10 or 0.23% weaker at US$1,338.60 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.15 US cents.
China's Shanghai Composite lost 0.6%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.77% and Japan's Nikkei 0.85%.
Lord help us if the outlook for the share market depends on the Trump-Clinton circus. Can't see that anything good will come out of tonight's dust-up - or the election, for that matter. Trading: buying retraces is an unpredictable business, even when the trend seems strong. Paid off well in FBR, but given nothing from NOX, so far.
