Friday’s solid session on Wall Street and the lack of bad news over the weekend has resulted in a sea of green across Asian markets today, with Chinese bourses leading the charge following the news of Xi Jinping’s extension in the top seat. The USD has retreated slightly, but that didn’t hurt Japanese shares as usual, but it did help commodities in particular gold and oil.
The Shanghai Composite made good on its positive return last week and is currently up over 1% to 3326 points, on charge to get to 3400. The Hang Seng Index is up about 0.7% to 31490 points, matching last week’s intrasession high and building support here for a move above previous support now solid resistance at the 31700 level:
S&P futures are also signalling fresh new highs, advancing on the solid Friday move to be above 2750 points, as we move into a third week of new highs:
Japanese stocks are doing very well indeed, with the Nikkei 225 roaring 1.3% to 21890 points, a new daily high post the breakout of the symmetrical triangle that has signalled a return of the bulls. The USDJPY pair wasn’t helping with Yen strengthening slightly, slowly descending the pair into the low 106’s and almost to last week’s intrasession low:
The ASX200 rounds out the Asian uplift with a solid session, lifting 0.7% to be well above the psychologically important 6000 point level, closing at 6042 points in a broad move. The Aussie dollar is the strongest mover against USD, nearly half a cent to be back near the 79 handle, currently at 78.70 and again providing ample opportunity for intraday traders here:
The economic calendar starts the week slowly with the usual weekly US Treasury sales, but there’s also a couple of ECB related speeches to keep an eye on, especially one from Super Mario at Brussels.