Daytrading September 8 afternoon

Thanks Oscar and morning regulars.


Half-time round-up:

A merger offer for Oil Search lit a fire under prospective takeover candidates this morning and helped send the Australian share market sharply higher despite broadly negative economic data.

At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was trading 51 points or 1% ahead at 5081, more than 100 points above yesterday's intraday low, the index's second-weakest point in more than two years. Energy stocks provided most of the momentum after Woodside Petroleum confirmed a $11.65 billion merger proposal to OSH. The sector, which yesterday tapped a ten-year low, was lately up 2.8% as traders snapped up the likes of STO, BPT and ORG. Shares in OSH were ahead almost 17%. WPL was down 2.75%.

Also strong this morning were metals & mining +1.8%, utilities +1.6%, materials +1.4% and financials +1.3%. Health -0.3%, IT -0.3% and consumer staples -0.1% missed the updraught.

The market shrugged off mixed economic figures. News that business confidence slumped to a two-year low was softened by an improvement in business conditions. The NAB confidence index declined to +1 last month, its lowest reading since the middle of 2013, from +4 in July. Conditions jumped to +11 from +6.

"It was not entirely surprising that confidence dipped, given the events of August (global stockmarket rout, Chinese policy mis-steps)," TD Securities chief Asia macro strategist Annette Beacher told Fairfax. "Along with a much lower AUD and healthy house price and credit growth, we do not see a rate cut by year end, keeping a floor under the AUD at 69 US cents for now."

A separate report showed consumer confidence dived to its lowest level in more than a year last week. The ANZ-Roy Morgan weekly index dropped 5.8% to a level last seen in July last year.

US equity futures remained upbeat as China's Shanghai Composite hovered either side of break-even ahead of trade data. Dow futures were recently up 126 points or 0.8%. The Shanghai Composite was last down 0.28%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng ahead by 0.48% and Japan's Nikkei down 0.75%.

Crude oil futures bounced 50 cents this morning to US$44.75 a barrel. Spot gold was $2.30 firmer at US$1,120.70 an ounce. The dollar was buying 69.61 US cents.


Nice 'black swan' event this morning has changed the market mood for the better. Risk assets rising - crude, AUD, US futures. Energy shorts likely took a bath. STO was the obvious buy this morning on the WPL-OSH news, but it took me 20 minutes to join the dots and that's too long in this game. Glad I made a good wage yesterday because it was that sort of morning. I got nothing. Not even my old friend Desperation offered a trade.