by Chris Becker
The Friday night bullishness has swallowed the avoidable weekend gap (markets should trade 24/7 people!) with a positive mood across Asia today, with the one-two punch of Deutsche Bank and Brexit troubles only landing the second blow as Pound Sterling sank.
First to stocks, with mainland Chinese bourses closed, the Hong Kong Hang Seng was up 1.3% going into the close while in Japan, the Nikkei close up nearly 1% to just under 16,600 points still just above support:
As for the ASX200, it gapped up 0.8% and stayed there the whole session, dragged up mainly by correlated bank stocks as trading volumes were way off due to the stupidly uncorrelated “Queens Birthday” bullshit holidays. The market closed at 5478 points with the financials index – the XXJ – up over 1% and possibly heading to a breakout here, which will lift the entire bourse up and over 5500 points very quickly:
Eurostoxx and S&P500 futures are looking good into the London session so success in Asia so far today should translate tonight, although I’d watch the FTSE closely for signs of wobbles given the Article 50 clause news.
In fact thats the only thing getting pushed around in currencies, with Pound Sterling gapping down this morning on news that PM Theresa May will pull the trigger on Brexit by March next year.
That sent Cable straight down to the 1.29 handle although it has recoverd to 1.2940, still below the trading lows on Friday night, so watch out soon when The City wakes up:
In other currencies, the Aussie dollar is treading water around the 76.5o level against USD, with Euro in comatose mode as well. Gold moved around a bit today but is basically back to where it finished on Friday at $1315USD per ounce.
The data calendar tonight is relatively quiet as we start the new trading quarter and month, with final PMI results for Europe and US manufacturing sectors that won’t surprise, although the official ISM manufacturing print in the US will be worth watching.