by Chris Becker
A whimpering end to an interesting week in Asian stock markets with Japanese and Australian bourses falling while Chinese stocks maintained scratch sessions. Bond markets received the hot money today on safe haven buying, as did Yen as risk gets ready for the big one tonight – the NFP print in the US.
In mainland China the Shanghai Composite is up a few points to 3280 as it again fails to breach the next obvious resistance at the 3300 point level. The Hong Kong based Hang Seng Index is steady, unable to make anew daily high for most of the week, with very tight daily ranges as its rally takes a pause:
The Nikkei was dragged 0.4% lower to 19952 points, breaking below the psychological important 20,000 point level. The USDJPY pair is trying to find a bottom here just above the 110 handle, but has not been able to make any new session highs for quite some time, so this looks bearish:
S&P futures are coming back slightly as markets gear up for the NFP and Trump tweets to the grand jury tonight:
The ASX200 had a poor finish to the week, losing 0.25% to 5720 points, holding just above the closely watched 200 day moving average. Beleagured Megabank division CBA finished the session down nearly 4% lower as a result of the money laundering allegations, which some brave souls might consider a small long position to try out a dividend yield play here as it reports next week.
The Aussie dollar is coming back after its poor reaction to the trade balance figures yesterday, today coming back to almost the 79.60 level against the USD. It seems the bulls remain in charge and will push aside any bad news and keep the Pacific Peso elevated:
The data calendar finishes with the big one tonight, the US non-farm payroll unemployment print.