King Canute. Tue Nov 23

It's more properly King Cnut but since that's a dangerous one to spell, he's commonly known as Canute. I've seen the beach where he's supposed to have tried to turn back the tide, at Bosham, and maybe things have changed since Cnut's day but there was hardly any tide that you'd notice and still the king couldn't reverse it.
(He's given a bad press because he was ridiculing his lickspittle courtiers who'd been bigging him up.)
I've been in Cnut mode, trying to fight the market lately. Once more, it's down despite a late rally in the States which left the main indices just below breakeven. We're in that phase we've had sporadically through 2010 where Euro worries and China slowdown are dominating sentiment.
I've cut Linc for 246 this morning because it might have made a double top. I'm not unhappy with this. My entry at 243 was not brilliant and it fell away after I bought. If it has made a minor double top then perhaps it will fall back towards 210, 220 which should be a good entry.

Best news is Avoca which does seem to have turned the tide. It's back up at 323, helped by an overnight rise in gold.

10.52 The Xjo, shown below on a 60 minute basis, failed to break back above short term resistance yesterday and made a lower high. There are a couple of support levels here, but I'm assuming they're going to break which would give targets down to the range lows at 4580 and 4560.

11.37 Ago has announced a decent resource upgrade at one of their mines although the stock hasn't jumped on the news. Otherwise, support is holding and the index is down 17.

Aru is continuing to strengthen, up to 119.5, and my only problem position is One Steel. Ost made a minor announcement that iron ore sales would be at the upper end of forecasts. Because they're not a pure steel producer, they have a hedge against flat steel prices with their iron ore sales and forecasts for FY11 and FY12 mean that they look very cheap. Admittedly, that's building in a steel price recovery and it's very hard to gauge whether that will happen or not.

I bought at 260 and they've slipped below support at 254. I'm prepared to stretch the friendship because the selling momentum is quite weak and it seems like a long squeeze for all those who jumped in on the first rally in mid November.

 1.24 I've been hunting around but haven't seen anything particularly compelling on the long or short side. I'm reasonably happy with what I've got and even Ost is clawing its way back, having gone 252 bid.

The market is following Chinese indices down and the Xjo is sitting at 4616, lower by 27.

Aax is resuming its run and is back up to 280. I still have 10k left, having sold out at 275 a few extras I bought on the dip. I'd take anything above 290 because I can't see it going straight through last week's short squeeze highs.

2.24 I was just looking at the Asx 200 chart on a closing basis. Interesting. One way to look at it is to see the first swing down from 4800 to 4700 as an "a" leg, followed by a little b wave rally and then 5 smaller waves to make up a c leg. Probably clutching at straws and the market is obviously still in selling mode but if the bottom of the range was to hold then the selling could be almost complete.

3.28 On our lows with Chinese markets down around 2%. I sold a couple of Aax at 288, didn't quite manage 290.

4.14 I did some more housekeeping on the close, sold more Aax at 287 (just 2.5k left), some Aru at 120, some Avo at 322 and a little earlier, some Mmx at 123 after a late blip up and a small gain vis a vis the extra stock I bought yesterday, (the first lot was at 125.5). My positions did pretty well so it was a good day in spite of what was happening to the broad market.
It's funny, now that the market has fallen 5 or 6% in 2 and a half weeks, I'm seeing a spate of bearish articles.