ASX 200 creeps higher despite retail sales plunge, lithium pops, gold stops

In the absence of anything really bad happening in the last 24 hours, stocks drifted higher. I'm not complaining, I love the peace and quiet of a modest gain, but I note there were more stocks that fell than rose today and that's hardly a sign of a healthy market.

Talking about healthy, interest rate sensitive stocks like real estate and consumer discretionary were the best today (despite some terrible retail sales data for the latter), likely a result of market rates continuing to come off the boil.

Lithium stocks were also a bright spot as investors responded to yesterday's big jump in lithium carbonate futures in China (but ignored its decline today!).

The charts of both gold and silver are pulling back to respective key support points. Will they hold or will they break? Clearly, investors didn't want to wait around to find out, as they pared back holdings of gold stocks today. 

Let's dive in!

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