by Chris Becker
Caution ruled across Asia today without a positive lead on Wall Street nor any definitive trends in commodities or currencies to go on. The Yen’s continued weakness meant a green board across Japanese bourses, but a slack Dalian commodity market coupled with a slight retraction in oil prices meant Chinese and Australian (but I repeat myself) shares slipped again.
The Shanghai Composite is slipping in afternoon trade, down 0.3% to 3144 points, bang on former resistance now support and a level to closely watch going into the close. The Hang Seng is putting in a scratch session today as it tries to find some confidence to not following through on yesterday’s rout, which is bringing it back to its former lows. The bear market rally attempt has failed here:
In Japan, the Nikkei is up 0.4% as the Yen moved lower against USD later in the session. The USDJPY pair is building again above the 115 handle, looking to breakout even further going into this week’s Fed Meeting:
S&P Futures are solid heading into the London open, although the pullback in oil prices should hurt US energy stocks:
The ASX200 fell 0.3% to 5545 points with commodity producers dragging the bourse down alongside a few listless bank stocks.
The Aussie dollar is trying and failing again to get above 75 cents against USD, rejecting that price level during the Asian session and setting up for a short term swing short position here down to 74.60 or so:
The data calendar will have a Euro focus tonight, with the closely watched German ZEW sentiment survey the main economic print overnight.