technology of the future - tuesday, page-35

I love the "Odyssey". It has so many lessons to teach us. The journey. The temptations to stray. The Sirens singing to the sailors.

It happened again on the Australian stock market. The big miners were down strongly yesterday – surely, The Sirens sang, they’ll be up today. Today. Today. Come to me Today.

At 2.00 p.m. the Materials Sector was up about 0.4%. By the end of the day, it had crashed in pieces on the rocks below The Sirens, down -0.6%. A fall in two hours of about -1%. Oh dear. If only we had wax to seal our ears.

Looking more objectively at all the evidence – our market today was flat. XAO down a smidgin, XJO up a smidgin. Volume was high – well above the 20-Day Average. Selling pressure was evident – particularly after 2.00 p.m. A narrow range day, on high volume, with selling pressure – a moral victory to the bears (disguised as beautiful Sirens).

Advance/Decline Ratio today 73%. That breadth measure is a negative for the market. Further evidence of how narrow the positives were on the market: Twenty Leaders up +0.3%. Mid-Cap 50 down -0.8%.

There’s nothing positive in those numbers. The only things holding up the market today were some banks, QBE, Westfield and Telstra. Dividend payers. Same old story. And that’s too narrow a base to support a market.

Here’s the Daily Sector Performance Chart:

Redbacka