It’s always a busy time for Trader Dealer when reporting season is under way.

Australia has weathered the last couple of weeks well as we move towards the tail end of the reporting season, with 42 of the top ASX listed companies reporting next week.

The positive signs sent by Wesfarmers yesterday have seen price targets updated by some of the big broking houses and the stock soar more than 5% since the result was released.

Job classifieds company Seek Limited’s results were presented on Tuesday beating consensus forecasts after posting a double digit increase to first half profits, with CEO Andrew Bassat citing that “The trend has certainly been for an increase in job ads”. Seek’s share price jumped 4% after the announcement.

The Trader Dealer Blog will have all the details, and of course in bite sized chunks on Twitter.

Our new trading platform Rapid Trader is proving very popular, and we are still offering free live ASX data until June 2010. To have a look for yourself, visit the Trader Dealer website or call us on 1300 130 545.

On a personal front there was a new arrival in our office with our CEO’s first child, a little baby boy Hamish Jack Isbister.  All three are doing well. 

If you have any feedback in relation to the e-newsletter or any of the things we get up to at Trader Dealer, we would love to hear it, so please email us at info@traderdealer.com.au.

Happy trading!

All the team

Trader Dealer Online
http://www.traderdealer.com.au
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It’s been a busy week in financial markets with equities bouncing from key levels of support, particularly on Tuesday night with the Dow Jones adding an impressive 169 points. Positive sentiment has come on the back of upbeat earnings reports, particularly banking stocks in the UK, while strong data on US manufacturing and relatively upbeat comments from the US Federal Reserve helped to push stocks higher.

The market is seeing some activity by the EU surrounding the Greek debt issue, however details are still relatively light. We know that the EU is providing conditional support for Greece and this is certainly offering some confidence to investors, however we believe they’re still some way off a definitive resolution. The Euro will be a key measure to track how this issue is playing out.

Locally, companies have been generally positive in their reports with a couple of crackers worth a mention. Early on in the week we saw Westpac set the banking sector alight with results that beat expectations and showed a strong turnaround in impairment charges. This gives evidence that the bad debt cycle has bottomed while the banks are set to benefit from reductions in funding costs as the healing of credit markets continues.

Looking at valuations, we’re seeing that the big four are trading on a cumulative P/E around 10.2 vs historical valuation of between 10 to 13 (P/E). You could argue that we’re at the bottom end of the valuation band and value investors are stirring – certainly a sector that has the opportunity for out-performance in the near term. 

Wesfarmers is also worth a mention, with the diversified conglomerate topping market estimates and confirming continued improvement in its Coles division. The company posted a net profit of $879 million, well ahead of expectations for $733 million. Bunnings continues to perform well in the hardware space while the restructuring in the Coles business is gaining traction. Look out Woolies!

Our View

Very encouraging to see the market bounce from support this week after five days of consolidation. Technically, we track the 30 day exponential moving average as a sign of short term trend. On Wednesday we saw the local market push up through this level which is certainly a bullish sign. Look for some follow-through over the coming days. The S&P/ASX 200 is still more than 6% below recent highs.