Afternoon trading April 23

Thanks Oscar and morning crew.


Half-time round-up:

A tentative rebound in the big banks helped the share market resist negative overseas leads, edging higher for a fourth week.  

The ASX 200 rallied 23 points or 0.4% to 5891 as the financial sector threatened to break a run of eight straight losses after the Royal Commission into banking produced a string of damaging revelations. Financials were lately up 0.7%. Also strong: metals & mining +1%, gold +0.8% and consumer staples +0.3%. The IT sector shed 0.5%, consumer discretionary 0.4% and energy 0.2%.

The advance defied soft futures trading and falls in Europe and the US on Friday, when the S&P 500 dropped 0.85%. Sentiment was helped by cautious gains in US futures this morning. S&P 500 futures were recently up 3.4 points or 0.13%.

The positive mood did not extend into Asia. China's Shanghai Composite fell 0.28%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.67% and Japan's Nikkei 0.34%.

Crude oil futures dipped 17 cents or 0.25% this morning to US$68.23 a barrel. Gold futures shed $2.50 or 0.19% to US$1,335.80 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.75 US cents.



Trading: glad others caught the ISU rebound. Terrific start to the week, but also one of those where in a matter of minutes you regret cashing out. Similar story with AEE from Friday - that was the day to get set. I had a choppy, unsatisfying week last week but today has pretty much made up for it.