Countdown. Tue Jun 14

Chinese CPI, PPI, industrial production and retail sales for May will be announced at midday. As far as I can tell, sentiment is such that we sell off on slowing growth and we sell off on recovering growth. With the index doing quite well to hold above last week's low of 4518, it's not hard to imagine a failure this afternoon.

Commodities and commodity stocks were weaker over the two trading sessions since last Friday's close. This was on the basis of Friday's trade data from China. US oil stocks were hit hard – see Greg Peel's round up on FnArena – but the WTI oil price fall was at odds with the rise in Brent which more and more investors now see as the benchmark.

10.30 The normal course of events is that investors take losses strategically as the Australian tax year end approaches on June 30th. This year, I'm not sure that there will be many gains to offset against losses so I doubt that this will have much influence. By the last week of the month, window dressing and bargain hunting will generally take over. I'm not convinced that sentiment will encourage bargain hunting but I can imagine that pension funds will be keen to see the index push higher from here and valuations are such that they can probably afford to throw good money at the market. Encouragingly, banks and financials have quickly shrugged off some early weakness and I'm hoping that this is an early sign of late year buying.

11.06 Spoke too soon.....there goes support at 4518 with the market having slumped 47 points.

12.02 The headline CPI is 5.5% cf expectations of 5.4% but because retail sales were below and industrial activity above forecasts, the initial reaction is reasonably positive. The AUD is rallying and that's probably the best proxy for risk appetite. Market down 28 at 4534.

1.43 The market is up 7, 4 or 5 points off a recent high at 4574.

As part of my longer term trading book, I've got a new long in SUN. Entry is 817 and stop is 780. I'm looking for a move to 850 before writing calls.

2.57 Almost a key reversal on both the daily chart and potentially the weekly too – although that would have to wait till Friday for confirmation. The market is up 24 points and the top 20 is outperforming with a rise of 0.8%.

4.12 Up 23 to 4585 which is not quite a key reversal day but definitely a reversal and the market broke the high of the last 5 days.

Suncorp closed well at 830.