Not quite a bath of blood here in Asia as the reaction to the US stock selloff was very mild indeed. The USD came back a little against most of the majors dragging commodities down slightly, with most Asian bourses having their own very mild retreats. Nothing like the 25% in a day moves in cryptocurrencies…
In mainland China the Shanghai Composite has continued its advance above resistance at 3400 points, now up 0.3% to 3447 points. The Hang Seng Index has fallen in line with other risk indices, down 0.3% to 31775 points taking a very slight pause out of this hot trend:
S&P futures are relatively stable but haven’t made any headway since the so-called big move overnight. I’m watching the session low at 2770 points or so for the Uncle Point here:
Japanese stocks retreated with the Nikkei 225 off nearly 0.5% to 23841 points even as Yen weakened against USD during the session. The USDJPY pair has continued to find some support here at the 110 handle, lifting up to 110.80 but again has failed to make a new daily high which suggests to me this just a bottom for now:
As I expected, the ASX200 has fallen into real trouble here, down over 0.5% on the whiff of bad news overnight, closing just above key psychological support at 6000 points. Again, the major culprits are banks, but helped along by a strong selloff in iron ore players with BHP and FMG off nearly 3% each and RIO even further.
The Aussie dollar has finally put in a poor showing, although it lept out the gate in the morning and almost touched the 80 cent mark. Its now back to the mid 79s and it will be very interesting in the City session ahead to see if support will be respected at the lower bound of the moving average channel here:
The economic calendar has only really major release tonight to watch that could be Aussie dollar sensitive, namely the latest Canadian central bank meeting, but there’s also the release of the Fed Biege Book and a few Fed officials speaking. Oh and watch that Bitcoin thingy….