Greek debt negotiations dictate caution

With Monday's confidence on Greece being turned around, stock markets have been forced reluctantly back to a cautious frame of mind.

Markets appear to have taken statements by EU President Donald Tusk as a reality check on Greece. Decision time has come and these decisions are necessarily going to involve very difficult political decisions for one or both sides of this negotiation, underscoring the potential risk of failure. The sharp turnaround in bond markets where buyers returned in force looks like “flight to safety” positioning by investors. This is also likely to keep share markets cautious heading into the weekend.

While the share market looks set to be cautious today, traders will be alert to the possibility that yesterday’s rally might continue given the strong the strong upward momentum implied by the 1.4% gain in the ASX 200 index.  This followed a neat bounce off the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level on Wednesday. This suggests that buyers are seeing reasonable value after heavy losses in some stocks and may get trigger happy if they have a sense that the rally is continuing, creating the risk of missing an opportunity to buy.

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