Follow Your Own Judgement Into Profitable Trading

Feb 22, 6pm

 The market held on to the positive at the close, with the focus mainly on our company profit results.

Among several outstanding results, including from Skilled, Ainsworth Gaming and other smaller stocks, among the leaders 

 "Coca-Cola's result was pretty good, Asciano's pleased, CSL had a strong result, Seek's was good.
CCL closed down 5c to $12.06 . CSL rose 77c to $31.72 . SEK rose 61c to $6.31.
*Woodside rose strongly but there was a bit of caution around on its growth projects said a senior insto dealer. WPL up 91c to $36.86 on 3.5m shares.  
*Boart Longyear went on with it after an outstanding profit result yesterday, said a senior insto dealer - a well run major being re-rated in a strong growth sector.
BLY up 20c to $4.13 .
*OneSteel was a standout - "but they are still operating in a pretty tough environment. They may have done too much and may come off a little tomorrow" he said.  
OST up 13c to 95c on 88m shares.

*The preliminary HSBC China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index rose to 49.7 in February vs 48.8 in January, HSBC Holdings said today, media services report.
Despite the improvement, HSBC's chief China economist warned that China's economy "remains on track for a slowdown" and said more stimulus measures are needed.

*At 4pm AEST the Nikkei Dow futures is up 30 points Shanghai CSI physical is up 21 points at 4.40 (was up 11 points at 4pm), Hang Seng futures is up 40 points, S&P futures is up 1.4 points, Nasdaq futures is up 4.5 points, Dow futures is up 13 points. Gold futures is down 60c to $1757.90. Crude futures is down 21c to $106.04.

AGK, APE, ASZ, BKL, BRG, CAB, CHC, CIX, CLH, CRF, ENV, FKP, FWD, FXJ, IAG, IDL, IOF, KCN, NWH, ORG, PPT, RHC, SBM, SSR, TOL, TPI, TTS, VAH, WTF,  int. APN, ILU, PNA, SKI, SYD fin. report tomorrow.

Regards,

Feb 22, 2.40 pm

While the UK and European markets sagged a little last night as the euphoria from the Greece deal leaked out, and the hard road ahead - including a possible default by Greece two months down the track when it holds its elections - came into view again.

Metals were higher, crude and gold surged last night. The US market was mixed in a narrow range.

Our market was in the negative earlier, but has been bolstered by other good profit results and a carry over of positive sentiment in some of yesterday's positive surprises, including Boart Longyear, OneSteel, Sonic Healthcare and others.

Among today's profit results, Asciano is up 15c to $4.78 on an interim result in line, but on a forecast for a better 2nd half and div at least maintained, Seven West is up 21cto 43.74 on a strong result, Suncorp is down 15cto $8.28 with the profit in line but the quality seen as poor and Woodside is up 65c to $36.60.

Kingsgate reported a strong result but is suspended while it completes a $7 million underwritten placement. Medusa is up 18c to $6.30 after its profit result and outlook last evening (very low cost producer - around $280 cash cost gold production in the Philippins).