by Chris Becker
Its mainly risk on for stocks in Asia with only Chinese bourses spoiling the party as they took a positive lead overnight from US stocks, with commodities bid and in sympathy a rising Australian dollar as well.
The Shanghai Composite is being sluggish today as the Yuan fix hits another record low, down 0.2% at 3120 points, now going into the close with the Hang Seng down about the same.
In Japan, the Nikkei continues its breakout, up 0.8% as the Yen continued its weakening trend. The Nikkei broke out last week above daily ATR resistance and while overbought here its on track to hit the April high just below 18000 points.
S&P Futures are up slightly with the four hourly chart of the S&P500 continuing to build some more momentum from here as corporate earnings come in better than expected:
The USDJPY pair remains hovering around the 104 handle, this level corresponding with the point of control that broke earlier last week. It tried to get back above 104.40 to help the Nikkei further but the four hourly chart shows no direction so far:
For the ASX200, it was a better day, taking back yesterdays losses, up 0.6% to 5442 with gains across most sectors. Bega Cheese took a whallopping though, down 18% on a poor showing at its AGM on the back of a bad infant formula deal. Not much other carnage or upside to look out for at the moment, as bank stocks try to claw back and ride the coattails of the German DAX.
Price action in the Aussie dollar was a lot better too, breaking out above the 76 handle against the USD alongside other commodities. This is a good swing play going into the London session but is coming up against swift resistance here and is considerably overbought:
The data calendar tonight starts off with the very closely watched German IFO survey, a key indicator of sentiment in Euroland and continues in the ‘States with crucial house price and consumer confidence data (but I repeat myself!)