Just like elastic. Thu Jun 2

That rubber band was getting stretched and the market has snapped back 91 points with just over half an hour of trading gone. US indices had no late recovery and suffered the worst loss for some time with falls over 2% across the board.

There are few safe havens with banks selling off hard and resources hit by a slowing US jobs market and weaker PMI numbers around the world. I'm out of IPL stock at 376 (v 384,385) as it has a second leg down. I have the June 400 calls which have slipped from 6 to 2.5 but that's small beer.

Otherwise, FMG is down 16 at 653 but no action is needed there while LNC has fallen another 5 to 309. I started buying a few OST towards the close and that stock is off 5 to 184. It's a small position and I'm using a wide stop so no action there.

The US markets have been in a trend channel down; the indices had stretched the top band and now are close to the bottom of the channel. Here's the S&P 500 chart.

The downtrend in Australia has been much steeper, reflective of tight monetary policy, but the recent behaviour is much the same. I'm hopeful of a higher low this time but unlike the last time, I'm going to wait for strength before buying anything new.

12.02 Just heading out for an appointment. The Asx 200 is bobbing around the opening levels. The major Asian markets are down 1.3, 1.5% which is a little better than us and Shanghai is only down around 0.6%. While there are dark clouds on the horizon, one area of optimism is in the Chinese tightening cycle which might be drawing to a close. Not a factor today though.

2.04 Not a lot of change but a bit lower, down 96, and a tick above the early low. Asian markets have followed us down further so no encouragement. I've taken a hit on FMG June 650 calls which are down to 16.5 from 31 but other than that, it's fairly mild. Just a bit boring, to be frank. Now that I'm not trying to pick intraday lows, there's precious little to do on a day like this. Not making it any worse is a reasonable outcome.

4.11 It's Armageddon all over again. The index fell 115 points and closed lower by 107 at 4600.4. Last time it did this, all of two weeks ago, I tried to buy a potential higher low. This time I'm just going to wait. Here's the chart.