Independents day. Mon Aug 23

Independent MPs hold the balance of power in Australia while votes are still being counted in some electorates. The market is up by 8 points after an hour and resource stocks are the outperformers as the chances of a mining tax are lower now.
My positions have gone against me but at this point I'm unconvinced that the rally is sustainable.
Challenger is easily the best of the stocks on my watchlist, up strongly after reporting much improved results. I wasn't quick enough to get on board though, as I was cautious about the response to the election result. Nice chart though.

12.54 The market is as undecided as the electorate and we're hovering close to unchanged, holding on to a 3 point gain.

My positions are moving back slightly in my favour and, as they're mostly shorts, I'm looking at a long position to provide some balance. This is in Murchison Metals which has been the underperformer among the iron ore stocks. I've chopped in and out of this a couple of times recently but with a drop, a congestion and a marginal new low followed by a rebound, I've now got a reversal pattern that I'm comfortable with.

It's in a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corp to build and operate rail and port infrastructure and has signed up foundation customers. Allied to the technical signal, I'm hoping that this will be enough to spark a turnaround.

So far, I've bought a handful at 162. I'm buying cautiously because it has been under a lot of pressure lately.

1.20 I've been following the combinations and permutations of possible coalitions and my initial assumptions were that the conservative independents would ally with the LNP after some horse trading. A bit more reading has suggested that the rift between these independents and their former party is quite severe and there is a real possibility that they could get into bed with Labor.

Greg Peel gave his usual, well thought out exposition in FnArena this morning showing how finely balanced the situation is.

It's just occurred to me that the market may be just realising this and we could have a sell off this afternoon if the enthusiasm for a Liberal/National victory has been overdone.

4.12 That was wishful thinking. No sell off, just indecisive trading and we finished with a loss of 2 points on the Xjo index.