by Chris Becker
The week begins meekly with a mixed reaction to Wall Street’s sombre Friday session. All major markets were basically unchanged, with stocks in Japan falling on a higher Yen, bond yields advancing slightly and commodities little changed.
In mainland China the Shanghai Composite is up 0.4% to 3282 as it has a better try at reaching up to and through key resistance at 3300 points. The Hong Kong based Hang Seng Index is up about the same to 0.6% down to 27146, holding above daily support at 27000 points. This bounceback remains weak so far and the Hang Seng needs to get above the high moving average band at 27450 soon to arrest this dip:
Japanese stocks are off slightly as Yen gains strength in early trade. The Nikkei closed 0.4% lower at 19393 points still confirming the very firm resistance at the 20,000 point level. The USDJPY pair is again pushing its way back down to the previous week’s low, remaining below the 110 handle:
S&P futures are very weak here as Friday nights session saw a close below the critical uptrend line at 2440 points, with a test of that session low to come later tonight:
The ASX200 fell at the open and stayed there for most of the session finishing 0.4% lower to 5725 points, still barely hanging on above the 200 day moving average and continuing to look very weak in this never ending sideways move. Reporting season is almost over and while nominally good, nothing is surprising to the upside here. The iron ore majors were the highlight with Fortescue lifting over 6% while Bluescope sank over 20% on a cavalcade of issues…
The Aussie dollar cannot make new session highs on the four hourly chart, struggling to hold here above the 79 handle against USD:
The data calendar starts the week slowly with no events as such, apart from the solar eclipse!