Lucky beats smart

11.43 am The futures drove our market 38 points lower early on as US indices sold off after early gains on the tax progress. The ASX 200 has surged back to be down just the one point which is pretty interesting.
Showing that's it's better to be lucky than good, I was tossing up between FMG and S32 on the close and plumped for S32, unaware that they were issuing a business update pre-market. It went my way and I've sold at 341 with the stock now 345. Contrastingly, I picked PTM over Magellan and Magellan is up 5.4% on an upgrade while PTM is down 7 cents. I've been monitoring MFG for a couple of weeks but it has surged through the breakout level giving little opportunity to get on board. A two or three day consolidation would be the best bet now to find a buy level.

Amazon's Australian website is up and running this morning in a low key way and that has encouraged some buy on fact strength in HVN and JBH which have raced back after early weakness. I've been sitting with HVN for about a week but added some JBH at 2424 earlier. Here's HVN.

JBH probably looks better actually.

The pick of the small caps is UPD which is up 16 to 130 on what I thought was a PR fluff sort of announcement. Obviously not. Anyway, I've been chopped around in this for quite a while but this is not just a daily but a weekly breakout after a correction so could signal a decent run.

The rest are pretty mixed but at this point there's a small gain net.

2.05 pm Good moves for the retailers with the two I'm in running nicely. Harvey Norman is up to 414 and JBH is up a similar percentage amount - 3.5% - to 2494. Back in S32 at 338 and hoping for a second go at the 340s.

In the small caps, the uranium stocks are universally well bid on good volume. I've bought DYL and PEN. Peninsula is driving higher on volume about 8 times higher than usual with another couple of hours to go.

2.42 pm Having a look at some small stocks with uranium interests that I follow. BKY up 13%, DYL up 10%, ERA up 10%, PEN up 5%, SLX up 16% and TOE up 12% and all on good volume.

4.23 pm The ASX 200 dropped 14 to 5972 in the end. It's still in corrective territory although not as weak as I was expecting. Just as well really as I'm still holding only longs in the large caps. HVN and JBH were the best performers finishing strongly at 425 and 2573 respectively. I kept about two thirds of the longs.

The small caps did ok too thanks to UPD but I'm just looking to ease out of positions now as I'm away on holiday next week.