Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Normal programming? Tue Jun 21

It looks very much like the last couple of days with a slightly surprising bullish lead from Wall Street providing early support to the market only for that to fade. The action is a touch stronger, 50 minutes in and the market is up 39 points from an early 55 point high. In previous days, the bulk of the gains were gone by this time.

My book is exclusively short and I'm watching carefully. FMG is up 9 at 611, LYC up 5.5 at 190.5, OSH unchanged at 656 and ditto for TLS at 303.

The DJIA looks unconvincing to me; it reminds me of the action here about a week ago where the structure for a retracement rally was in place but there was no acceleration away from the turning point. With the Greek problems having eased temporarily, I'm not sure that there's too much more of a gain from that front.

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11.25 Foster's Group has rejected a takeover approach from SABMiller at 450 on the grounds that the bid undervalues the company. The market agrees and has pushed the stock up 57 to 510. When the stock resumed trading at 11am it helped push the market back above 4500. Yesterday's high was at 4520.6 and the market might have a tilt at that level. I've had a browse through my watchlist but can't find anything to buy.

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11.34 RBA Governor Stevens just spoke and reiterated the need for rate rises later on but with no immediate urgency. Nothing new there but no solace for the market either and enough to stall the rally.

12.33 There was a marginal new high on an intraday basis at around 11.30, since then the index has faltered and there's a minor sell signal now on the XJO 10 minute chart.

1.14 TLS is starting to look weak. I should probably have bought July puts but the June 301s might just bring some joy.

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3.09 I spent the morning shorting a few things intraday to buy back on the seemingly inevitable sell off. Fortunately, I bought back the day trades because the market has finally shown some gumption and is back above 4500.

I sold another few OSH June 675 puts at 22 but still have have half the original balance. The stock has recovered from a post lunch low of 652 to be up 4 at 660.

3.22 About two weeks ago, I was listening to an executive from the new National Broadband Network on the radio. This is the superfast connection which Australia apparently can't live without and which will be the lifeblood rejuvenating TLS. The presenter asked about the rollout in Tasmania and the spokesman rabbitted on. Eventually the presenter asked how many customers they had signed up. It was 300 (or something very close). The presenter was polite but clearly incredulous; this was the $46 billion project which was more important than public transport bottlenecks in most of the major Australian cities. This was the project that warranted huge amounts of public money when there are plenty of private alternatives available to the Australian consumer...the pet project of the once and future (?) king, Kevin Rudd. It was pretty funny.

3.42 The point I'm making is not to kick Kevin Rudd (specifically..anyway, I'm the bigger fool, I voted for the man) but to point out that the NBN is unlikely to be the saviour for TLS.

Meanwhile the index just peaked at 4510, I think, which is 10 points shy of yesterday's high. It's sliding back now.

4.14 The market closed with a gain of 56 points. The 60 minute chart looks quite promising so maybe we'll have a further day of consolidation tomorrow. Still short though but mainly via options.

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