On strong leads overnight the S&P/ASX 200 Index shot up over 1.5% in the morning session and then finished just below 1% up, or 42 points to 4267 points.
I definitely got it wrong yesterday when I said the market had just broken below its new year uptrend, but just quietly, before you get too excited, the market still needs to clear the 4300 resistance zone area to follow the North Atlantic equity markets bullishness:
Japan’s Nikkei 225 felt the love and rose 0.75% or 67 points to 8876 points building on its bullish case, the volatile Hang Seng up over 1.5% or 316 points to 20649, with the Shanghai Composite similarly up 1.75%, currently at 2307 points and clawing back to resistance at 2325 points. Its still in a dominant downtrend, but like most equity markets has improved dramatically during January.
The AUD remains strong, staying above 1.07 against the USD, currently at 1.0717 whilst WTI crude was flat staying at $97.64USD a barrel after falling overnight. Gold continued the flat meme, rising only $1.70 during the Asian session, currently at $1751USD and $1630 AUD per ounce.
This move past $1750 is a significant resistance level for gold:
Movers and Shakers
Unicorns and rainbows today according to the sectors, with only healthcare losing, the biggest wins to IT mainly due to Computershare’s (CPU) 3.5% rise, whilst materials rose 2% due mainly to “you know who”.
Checking out the ASX8 (the top four banks and miners), ANZ was up 0.4%, retracing yesterdays move whilst the big brother of banks, the Commonwealth (CBA) also rose 0.4% remaining below $51 a share, but slowly reaching above its former resistance at $50 per share.
National Australia Bank (NAB) up 1% but still frustratingly sideways on the charts, and finally Westpac (WBC) was up 0.3%, still below its 200 day moving average and also remaining in a neutral stance.
It seems investors want banks with the highest exposure to property investment….nobody ever said investing was about rational expectations!! (except 98% of academia)
Quickly checking out Macquarie (MQG), the Millionaire Factory remains just above its crucial $25 per share resistance level, up 0.6% but going nowhere for 7 trading days (I was out of my long yesterday, FWIW)
To the holes, where the big move by BHP Billiton (BHP) moved the index, possibly on the good news coming from a possible Xstrata/Glencore merger bolstering commodity plays around the risk world. Even though the Big Australian broke its short term uptrend yesterday, again I was proved wrong (like most technical plays, the edge comes with money management, not predicting price moves, a fact lost on those who don’t understand math and human behaviour, sorry for the sermon..)
Its “twin” Rio Tinto (RIO), shot ahead 3%, finally breaking above its 200 day moving average, a key psychological market for traders watching traders watching screens, but not resistance at $70:
Gold miner Newcrest Mining (NCM) was up 1.25%, whilst Fortescue (FMG) was relatively quiet only gaining 0.6% amongst the strength and gravitating around the $5 per share psychological barrier.
To finish out the ASX8, Woodside Petroleum (WPL) was basically flat, only up 0.4%, its short term uptrend morphing to sideways with short term resistance zone around the $34 mark.
The overnight futures for the ASX200 are up another 10 points to around 4280 while other equity futures are positive but subdued going into the European session.