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The ASX200 continues to find buying support into decent dips but it’s not yet got the stamina / belief to make any headway on the upside, yesterday saw the local market bounce over 50-points from a weak open, following an aggressive late downturn by US markets, but once it returned to unchanged the buying almost instantly became far more passive. Currently markets are transfixed on any fresh news around the Omicron variant and until we see the market hold firm on bad news the likelihood is we haven’t yet seen the end…
A soft session in the US saw the local market face to face with a ~100+pt fall with futures dropping like a stone, however the worst of it was seen even before our equity market had even opened. The local index was soft on the open to trade a much more palatable -67pts/-0.9% before a swift recovery kicked in and by the afternoon it was making an effort to close higher on the day. In the end it wasn’t to be, though strong buying out of the day’s low…
The ASX200 proved very resilient on Wednesday managing to largely ignore loses on overseas bourses , we finally closed down less than 0.3% although only 20% of stocks managed to close in positive territory. The influential Banking & Resources Sectors are finding some support into the recent weakness and these are 2 areas of the market which will need to perform if the bulls like ourselves are to be rewarded with a classic Christmas Rally. If we consider how far some of these big names have fallen in recent months it’s not…
I was up last night around 3am with a dog that didn’t want to sleep (don’t ask) as the US market (and our futures) recovered from the whack they copped yesterday afternoon our time on question marks over the efficacy of current vaccines to the new variant, only for the Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cast another shadow by suggesting that the term ‘transitory’ was no longer appropriate when it came to inflation. That was a fairly big call…
Tuesday saw the ASX200 rally strongly into lunch only to fail badly in the last hour of trade after the Moderna CEO reminded us all that there remains significant unknowns / risks with the Omicron COVID strain – if the ASX can both rally & fall around 100-points in one session I feel like we should all brace ourselves for a volatile run into Christmas. The market has remained in a fairly tight trading range for the last 6-months although it certainly doesn’t feel like it this morning.
The ASX attempted to rally on the final day of the month and was doing well early to be +92pts up at the lunchtime high, however late selling kicked in after the Moderna CEO predicted in an FT report that vaccines will struggle against the Omicron variant. US Futures rolled over, Asian equities erased earlier gains and risk off swept back across the market knocking the ASX 200 ~76pts, almost half of which happened in The Match Out (i.e. between 4 &4.10pm).
The ASX200 felt strong yesterday even though it closed down over 0.5%, the local index managed to recoup half of the days early losses with 35% of stocks finally to closing in positive territory while the IT and Resources Sectors both closed up on the day – only 2 stocks fell by over 5% which illustrated the lack of aggressive selling, unlike Friday! However it’s one thing for the market to find support into weakness but we need a definite 360 about-face in market sentiment to make another assault on new highs, now over 5% away.
There was a degree of anticipation this morning given the weekend news flow, however as currency markets opened and were fairly subdued it quickly became apparent that the market reaction towards the Omicron variant would not be as severe as futures had implied. As is customary on a day like this, the worst of it was seen early as stop losses dinged the market sharply lower on open (-100pts) before buyers quickly emerged pushing…
Omicron has been the subject on many people’s minds over the last few days, surely not another ruined Christmas etc. The social impact of lockdowns over the last few years has been simply awful and one comment I’ve heard numerous times over this weekend has been “I’m not sure I can cope with another lockdown” . Europe was already struggling under yet another winter wave of COVID and now we have a new variant thrown into the mix which has already described as “cause for concern”, although at this stage it does appear markets…
Stocks opened slightly higher on Friday and with the US settling into its Thanksgiving long weekend everything was pointing to a low volume quiet day, how things changed over the ensuing hours – we’ve repeatedly said the market will breakout when least expected and that’s one call we certainly got right – just not the direction we were after:
