Macro Afternoon

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by Chris Becker

Another day of jawboning this time the USD is still falling after Trumps statement last night it was too high – even though he won’t call the Chinese currency manipulators like he promised too (shocked. stunned..) Its a slew of Wall Street banks reporting tonight so it could be a rocky night, let alone the Korean and Syrian bruahahah.

In China, the Shanghai Composite closed up a few points after gapping down at the start of the session to finish at 3276 points as it once again can’t get above overhead resistance at the 3300 level. The Hong Kong based Hang Seng finished a little more downbeat, off 0.3% in the last hour of trade. Its still creating a small pattern of support just above the trailing ATR support zone at 23700:

Japanese stocks were off again making a new monthly low with the Nikkei closing down 0.7% lower with a late selloff in Yen helping stem the side, but still remaining below key support at 19000 points. The USDJPY pair has bounced back in the last hour or so, but is still just above above the 110 handle in what looks like short term positioning before the London open:

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S&P futures are starting to move slightly higher and I’m watching potential short covering here going into the Easter weekend:

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The ASX200 finally caught up to the risk aversion trade, slumping at the open and staying down all day, off by nearly 0.7% to close at 5889 points. The big falls were the iron ore extractors with BHP off 3%, Fortescue down 7% and RIO off by over four percent.

The Aussie dollar rallied on the good job figures and sanguine RBA financial stability review, shooting almost up to 76 cents against USD in a big move higher.Will it have legs during the Easter break though (yet another reason why I hate when trading stops for nonsense holidays or weekends!)

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The data calendar tonight includes the Uni of Michigan consumer confidence numbers but more importantly its the CPI print for March that everyone will be watching.

Have a happy Pasta-over, don’t get too worked up about Korea and be careful on the roads. You’re all rubbish drivers so take it easy.