Caution ahead of earnings season. Tue Jul 27

Following another bullish lead from Europe and the USA, the Australian market is up but underperforming relatively. The quarterly production reports from the miners are petering out but the twice yearly reporting season is just starting.
There's some levelling out, with banks, industrials and retailers leading the charge today so that my resource centric group of long positions is doing very little.
Mmx is up 3 to 190 but I noticed last night when scanning through the company announcements, that a large investor Harbinger has been reducing its holding quite dramatically. This is balanced somewhat by an increase in the holding of Posco, the Korean steel company, but I suspect that hedge fund Harbinger is an aggressive seller so I reduced my holding a little at 191.
I bought some Mirabela Nickel though, at 228. This is a stock that I don't usually trade, but I've got some in a longer term account and have been following it. It's a slightly unusual trade for me lately, because I'm chasing a breakout, but it looks as if it could really accelerate. There was a muted early reaction to its quarterly production report, which looked ok but slightly disappointing. However, the stock didn't sell off, so I think that buyers might have to chase it. Here's the chart and I guess my stop is at about 210, although I'd be pretty concerned if it slipped back into the small congestion between 211 and 219.

1.53 The tepid enthusiasm for stocks continues and we're only up 16 points now. The Xjo chart looks tired in the very short term with this being (potentially) the third day in a row where we've sold off early highs, but structurally, we broke out last Friday and the market doesn't have the look of a 5th wave top. I'm working with the scenario that a sell off will be quite limited and the most likely outcome is a test of the June high at 4620.

4.06 A lacklustre day once again and my resource longs have been subject to profit taking today. Mbn is costing already and I'm regretting not trying to buy on a pullback. It's more concern about tactics rather than direction though. With the turnaround in the Shanghai index, the Baltic dry freight and base metals generally along with better (or less bad) than expected industrial production and housing numbers out of Europe and the US, it seems to me that the risk is to the upside.

We're just about to match out for the day.

And there it is, a rise of 11 points. Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong markets are flat while Shanghai is having a small pullback so the caution is widespread.