QE 1 and a half. Wed Aug 11

A limited reinstatement of quantitative easing - thanks Daily Telegraph journo - failed to excite the US market very much and though it only fell about 0.5%, the chart looks nasty. A marginal new high, a drop and then a rally back which falters below that high. It's all very short term, of course, but I can see why we've fallen pretty hard from the open.

Allied to the weakness in base metals (Chinese GDP figures yesterday, not enough imports) we fell from the start and at 11.24 am we're still down 51 points. It's about 10 off the low at this level and I'm disappointed that the Xjo chart didn't have a shape more like that of the Dow, above, because I was hoping that we might have over egged the pudding yesterday.

I've just got a few Challenger left and a small long position in St Barbara - but I was hoping for an opportunity to put on a couple of short positions.

A few that I've been thinking about have got too far away from me, although Fairfax is still possible.

The rally took it up to previous swing highs from late May and June and now there's a lower high (potentially) at 150.

12.31 Chinese markets have bucked the trend and are stronger, with another raft of Chinese data out. It's helped our market to get out of the sick bed for a little while although we're still down 1%.

Fxj has moved away from me so no action there yet.

2.15 Early gains in China have receded and our rally faded. We're down 71, on our lows. Fxj rallied to 146 and I've shorted some there. If it gets back to 147 or 148 then I'll do some more.

4.12 It's all doom and gloom here with the market down 1.9% on the day. The Xjo index has already failed to hold above the peak of the first rally leg (4466 on Jul 15) so the next level is around 4350 which is more than 100 points away. It looks like a sell on rally set up now and I sold a few more Fxj at 146.

I've got a few more potential shorts; Aio, Ipl and Ozl for example. A choppy rally would be handy.