by Chris Becker
Asian stocks have had a mixed start to the week following a similar positive, but mixed lead from overnight markets on Friday. The Yen weakened helping domestic Japanese shares while Chinese bourses are the most positive moving on nothing as usual!
The Shanghai Composite is up over 1% after the lunch break to be at 3239 points, building once more after its recent pullback. The Hang Seng Index is up about half that, taking back Friday’s losses to get back above 24000 points:
Japanese stocks just finished in the green after being up a bit more during the session as Yen weakened against USD. The Nikkei closed up 0.1% to finish at 19251 points. The hourly chart for USDJPY show the small consolidation at just above the 113 handle that is slowly melting up to hourly ATR resistance at the 113.35 zone which could prove too far to go in what will be a quiet session tonight:
S&P futures are up significantly in very low volume as US traders are not at their desk tonight due to President’s Day:
The ASX200 was the worst performer in Asia today, down 0.2% to close just the 5800 point level. Mining engineering stocks were the ones making the moves with WorleyParsons down 12% as it posts a half year loss.
The Aussie dollar is starting to climb out of its small bottom consolidation at the 76.50 level against USD today, almost up to the 77 handle and hourly ATR resistance proper as we head into the London session.
The data calendar starts the week very slowly with nothing of note overnight as US markets have the day off.