Macro Afternoon

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by Chris Becker

Not even the fat man with a Fat Boy rocket can spoil the fun here in Asia with risk casting aside any doomsday news and bidding up almost across the board. Korean stocks actually rallied as did the Won, but all eyes are on Bitcoin as the bubblecryptocurrency cracked the $10,000 mark! What’s next?

In mainland China the Shanghai Composite is clawing its way back, slightly up after bouncing off support at 3300 points yesterday to be at 3338, or 0.15% higher. The Hang Seng Index is having a scratch day, down about 0.1% to 29,653 points. This inability to make a new daily high coupled with a fall below recent session lows mean I’m watching the low moving average at 29300 for a possible breakdown:

S&P futures are floating higher, ready to re-engage on the open tonight as risk throws caution to the wind:

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Japanese stocks were positive even with the missile test as the Yen lost some ground against the USD. The Nikkei closed nearly 0.5% higher to 22597 points, but not yet making a new daily high as this consolidation phase continues. The USDJPY pair is slowly melting higher, almost breaking the daily downtrend and ATR resistance overhead at the 111.80 area:

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The ASX200 is back above 6000! The local market blipped higher on the open and held on to most of the gains during the day, closing up 0.4% to 6011 points. Broad gains across most sectors with the banks finally gaining some traction here.

The Australian dollar continues to be pulled down to the 76 handle against USD after that false breakout earlier in the week. The overnight releases will continue to weigh on the Pacific Peso as will the commodity markets, as I suspect we might see a full retracement to last months low:

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The data calendar fires up tonight with the all important German CPI print for November, then 3Q GDP for the US followed by DOE oil inventories with a speech to Congress by Janet Yellen thrown in for good measure.