Sell on fact

Post the 3 year loans to EU banks and following cautious testimony from Bernanke, markets sold off with gold the hardest hit. The weekly still looks ok, it's a long way down to the start of the run at 1523, but this leg up has hit a brick wall. PRU has moved in lockstep with the gold market, falling through the bottom of the trading range and recovering somewhat while staying above the earlier breakout level around 260. Gold has recovered USD 22 in our time zone.

I sold the balance of AWC on the open at 135, the same price as yesterday for the first half. LNC is down but holding while NAB is flat in a market that's lower by 29 points at 1.32 pm. Chinese PMI numbers for February came in a little better than expectations at 51 although it's not helping the HSI too much with the index down 0.5% after about an hour.

I'm not sure what to make of the index at the moment. Yesterday's high and the subsequent failure might have been enough to complete this last swing up since a low in late December but the whole desire to get out of risk trades seems a bit knee jerk when authorities world wide are pumping out credit.

4.15 There was more weakness in the afternoon and the final result was a drop of 1% to 4256. I'm out of AWC but still long and a little nervous after the sell off last night.