Macro Afternoon

Advertisement

A relatively good start to the week here in Asia with most stock markets advancing, although Japanese bourses were closed for another holiday as traders await a big slab of earning reports across the region. The USD rose against most currencies, especially Korean Won while gold was relatively steady.

In mainland China the Shanghai Composite has continued its advance lifting nearly 0.5% to finally be above resistance at 3400 points, after slowing down in the latter half of last week. The Hang Seng Index is flat, losing a handful of points to be at 30795 as it eases off the throttle a little bit from last weeks breakout above 30000:

Advertisement

S&P futures are effectively unchanged and it will be interesting to see where this goes after a stonking week last week:

Japanese stocks are closed today with trading in Yen also light on. The USDJPY pair has nearly matched its Friday night high staying just above the 113 handle, ready for further advances as momentum remains quite positive on the four hourly chart:

Advertisement

The ASX200 is up only slightly after getting past the 6100 point level last week to close 0.1% higher at 6130 points. The market gapped a lot higher on the open but couldn’t hold on to the gains and slid back to where it started. While bank stocks advanced, the big 3 miners all fell back alongside Newcrest which fell even as gold held steady.

The Aussie dollar has retreated from its highs on Friday retracing back to 78.40 against USD in a fairly large Monday morning selloff. This rally maybe peaking here with momentum reverting back to the mean:

Advertisement

The economic calendar is very light on with some Treasury auctions tonight, followed by some lower tier credit card data. Tomorrow is the start of some earnings here in Asia plus local building approvals and ANZ job ads.