Bobbing around

An hour into trade and the Asx 200 is 30 points higher as some buying in the banks provides a lift. Reporting season has been ok and there's a certain amount of yield driven activity.

I've shorted a couple of things into the early strength. I've sold a few FMG at 617 as the stock touched yesterday's high of 619.

 

The other short is in DJS at 274. I'm hoping that this is making a pennant correction and I'm looking for this morning's minor upswing to fade as has happened over the last few days.

11.56 It's a mixed picture with the HSI up, Japan down, greater China flat to down and Australia up. I expect more chop this afternoon with yesterday probably marking the short term peak of the bounce and today simply a correction of the pullback from yesterday with a battle between buyers and sellers.

12.41 Wage pressure is lessening and that has helped the market to kick up towards 4300 again. The AUD has held its own and the market is at 4291. I was looking for a rally to a lower high but that's looking less likely now. Here's the Asx 200 60 minute chart.

1.21 4300 was not a stumbling block and the intraday high, about now, is at 4311. It's a rise of 1.5%.

2.45 It was premature to start looking to short the strength. The market has just been to 4322, up 75, and I've been scrambling with my shorts. I'm mostly holding for the moment because the wave count looks quite full but I'm getting fed up with this business of fighting the market. I've been doing it for a while now and it's getting on my nerves.

I'm going away next week for more than a month and not really in the mood to be doing this. What I want is to just leave things alone and get on with a few chores and generally get into holiday mode but because there has been so much volatility there are opportunities around...but you've got to be in the right frame of mind.

3.40 The market has eased a few points but I've been making heavy weather of it lately. I jobbed some DJS and improved my average to 276. The stock is at 277 now so almost square there. FMG is at 621. There's not much damage done but it's really about developing patience. An hour ago was when the short term wave count implied a top and if I was going to short something, that was the time. I'm actually going to stay short the DJS and FMG overnight. DJS because it failed at 282 resistance and FMG because there's a stop at 631 and the rally seems tired. Excepting the fast move down, there are buyers around for FMG in the high 5 dollar, low 6 dollar range but at 622, that support fades.

4.10 The banks had rallied quite hard from a softer opening but retraced a fair bit of that gain so it's slightly surprising that the index held on so well. It finished at 4304, up 57.