By Chris Becker
These daily updates need to be placed in context with the longer trends and drivers amidst the overall technical picture, so head to Macro Investor for a free trial. Former “Trading Week” readers will find it reborn as “Technicals“, published 8am each Monday morning.
As you can see in the table opposite, most Asian markets saw gains today, but the ASX200 fell short, closing down 0.1% to 4127 points, again failing to close above short term resistance at 4140 points, as seen on the daily chart below. Remember me saying that other Asian markets are far more interesting? Not also I’ve marked the Macro Investor medium term system short/tight signals, plus the KC Signal from 1st May that signalled a possible top:
The New Zealand NZ50 was up 0.1%, slowly coming off its 3400 base (oh for a NZ equities ETF!!!!! come on ASX – do some bloody innovating for once). The Nikkei 225 was up 0.7%, continuing its very strong bounce, whilst the Hang Seng also saw some big gains, up 1.2% but yet to clear the recent high. Mainland Chinese markets finally saw some good bids, but the Shanghai Comp is currently flat, still not wanting to follow through with the CRB Commodities Index:
On currency markets, the Aussie is up slightly at 1.026 against the USD, and looks like breaking out above the key level I identified previously to continue this rally:
Meanwhile, the Euro/USD cross has ticked up slightly in the Asian session, but it looks really really weak, still failing to get above the 50 day moving average whilst the US Dollar Index (DXY) holds on for now.
Gold jumped above the $1600 level today for the first time in awhile, rising now to $1608 as the London session opens, whilst in AUD terms, it is up only slightly at $1563AUD per ounce.
In the debt markets today, Aussie 10 year yields gave back half of yesterday’s losses, falling 3 basis points, with the generic yield at 3.15%, still below resistance at 3.2% as trades held off as the RBA held off at its monthly meeting today. The market is still forming an ascending bullish triangle is forming on the daily chart:
Australian Stocks
The major movers today by sector saw energies sold off, mainly because of ASX8 stock Woodside Petroleum (WPL) falling 1.8%, with discretionary stocks coming back a little – so in other words a reverse of yesterday. Casino remains open!
The other big mover in the ASX8 (the big four miners and big four banks, seen in the table to the left) was Rio Tinto (RIO), mainly on news that cuts were apparent at admin and back office functions (but none operationally). Is this the end of minebot 3d1k? Oh noes….
The banks were sold off slightly, even as building approvals shot up, and bank CDS prices came off the boil.
The ASX200 itself remains in a trading range between 4000 and 4150:
Tonight
Its a relatively quiet one in overseas markets, with the EMU PPI released shortly, then secondary retail stores from the US before the closely watched May print for US factor orders, where the consensus is for a small uptick, even though the rate of growth has been decelerating.
Don’t miss the overnight market updates by my colleague Greg McKenna, in MacroBusiness Morning.
Til then, you can find me on Twitter here.
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