by Chris Becker
Asia starts the week with a good lead from Wall Street on Friday night, and all stock markets – save continental Chinese – are in the positive helped along by a bullish mood on oil prices.
In China the Shanghai Composite is having a bad start to the week, falling going into the close and down nearly 0.7% to 3069 points, still unable to climb back above its once critical support level at 3100. In Hong Kong the Hang Seng Index is up nearly 1% to almost best its last week high at 25422 points:
Japanese stocks put on modest gains as Yen sold off briefly to help push risk a little more from the Friday move. The Nikkei closed up 0.4% higher, still crawling along above its pre-breakout level at 19500 points but unable to beat resistance at 20,000. The USDJPY pair gapped down, filled to the Friday high and then tried to beat localised resistance on the four hourly chart at the 111.50 level. It may have another stab tonight if the USD strength meme comes back:
S&P futures are slowly climbing as Trump continues on his first overseas tour, hopefully taking some volatility with him. This takes the S&P back to its pre-dip level where the 2400 point area will be heady resistance:
Even in the face of an S&P downgrade, Megabank stocks helped push the ASX200 higher, alongside the re-embiggened iron ore trade, sending the local bourse some 0.8% up to 5771 points. Only ANZ fared poorly as the rest of the financials all rallied, while the iron ore triumvarate, gold and oil stocks all pushed higher on the Chinese frenzy.
The Aussie dollar is maintaining strength here a little below the 74.50 resistance zone, as the series of lower highs on the four hourly chart starts to weigh on this recent upcycle. The 74 handle and uptrend line must hold here if this little rally is to continue into the next part of the economic data cycle:
The data calendar tonight starts the week very slowly with no major releases on the schedule.