by Chris Becker
Hesistation across Asia today as US markets go quiet for Thanksgiving and retailers around the world ramp up for the Black Friday day/weekend/week.
In mainland China the Shanghai Composite has reversed its recent breakout above 3400 points and then some, swiftly selling off into the close by slump more than 2% to 3351 points. This comes after a bond rout and concerns of more officialdom controls on the very speculative market. The Hang Seng Index is down 0.6% in sympathy to be back below 30,000 to 29811, effectively unchanged since the big breakout at the start of the week:
S&P futures are basically unchanged given the lack of trading tonight:
Japanese stocks had a holiday today, which is probably a good thing given the resumption in strength in Yen. The USDJPY pair remains quite depressed here at just above the 111 handle and looks set to breakdown again in a move that could take it to its monthly support at 107:
The ASX200 had a complete scratch day today with a poor overnight lead almost leading to a selloff in the afternoon before recovering to finish at 5982 points. Tomorrow is likely to be another scratch day without any leads from US stocks, but support at 5945 points or so should remain firm here.
The Australian dollar has not followed through with its gains from last night in the Asian session, still just above the 76 handle against USD, but not making new highs. I’m watching the high moving average here for signs of a possible reversal:
The data calendar is relatively quiet tonight with Thanksgiving holiday, but we do get the UK’s 3Q GDP preliminary print.