Hiatus. Thu June 25

The broad US market was up 0.7% last night with European markets stronger as well. The Australian market has followed that lead to the letter with a rise of 25 points or 0.7% on the Xjo top 200 index. It looks like another day of consolidation after the steep falls on Tuesday but I'm not looking for much of a rally. At the moment, I have a couple of shorts which are fairly flat on the day and I'm more focussed on looking for other shorting opportunities if the retracement seems to have run its course. No trades so far at 12.23 pm.

1.04 pm Out of the small short in Qbe at 1892 (v 1899).

Looking at a short in Sonic Health Care. Here's the daily.

It looks like the pattern that has been quite common recently of a lower high after a 3 wave rally and then the start of a move down. Yesterday's low was 1169; it's 1170 now so close to a short.

1.18 I've squared up Bxb by hedging with stock at 571 as this is the 3rd bar since the stock broke support and there has still been no appreciable move.

1.54 Just bought some Awc at 137.5. It's not the strongest buy signal on the daily but it looks like a reasonable reversal - almost an island reversal - and the 60 minute chart is bullish.

The 60 minute chart made a buy signal on the open and a trade at 138.5 would provide a point to add to a position. 2.41 I've been faffing about now for over half an hour getting rid of Internet Explorer 8 which plays havoc with the blog software. IE8 automatically deleted IE7 making it difficult to go back despite the new layout being horrible. In the end I downloaded Firefox Mozilla in order to have a back up if it all failed meaning that Microsoft are doing great work in helping the competition. When I was a market maker paying tens of thousands a year for specialist software I had the same problem. Developers would make a raft of changes and then use the client as the guinea pig. It's the layout changes that are generally the worst as they seem so frivolous and random. It's as if you got up in the morning and the contents of your fridge are now in the laundry and your socks are in the cabinet with the DVDs...like having an energetic dementia patient come and do your cleaning.

As for the market, it's still running gently with resources the best performers. The pressure on the sector from the Rio rights issue might be easing as the rights are no longer trading. Awc has traded up to 139.

3.58 It has been a quiet day for me but I've spotted an opportunity in Cfx, a retail trust. Here's the daily.

In this case it's possible that a continuation up might still fail to push through the recent high at 174 but there's a strong chance it will get close. Bought some ahead of the match out at 167.

4.11 All over for the day with a strong gain of 49 points although not as strong as the Hang Seng or the Nikkei both up over 2%. I've got a very small book now with minor longs in Awc, Cfx and Ozl, no short positions and hedged positions in Bxb and Gpt.