Stocks came back today in Asia as more and more traders are tending to believe the nascent trade war initiated by Stormy Trump won’t even start with a single shot. The news that his plan may spare select countries like Australia indicated there maybe less of a concern as traders now turn towards more relevant short term gyrations with the ECB meeting tonight and the NFP print on Friday.
The Shanghai Composite rallied on its return from the long lunch break, closing 0.5% higher at 3288 points, now getting close to resistance above at the 3300 point level. The Hang Seng Index is up about twice that, mimicking yesterday’s falls, up 1.6%, closing at 30713 points. Bouncing off key support at 30000 daily momentum is ticking up here, all signs are pointing to a continuation with the high moving average at about 30800 the mark to beat next:
S&P futures are ticking up higher, matching the Tuesday high at around 2722 after a lacklustre session last night:
Japanese stocks were solid today with the Yen out of the picture, as the Nikkei 225 closed 0.5% higher to 21368 points, although the bourse is still very close to a multi-week low. The USDJPY pair is pushing back below the 106 handle, having rejected overhead trailing ATR resistance at the 106.50 level overnight and getting back to its pre-breakout point again:
The ASX200 is doing a lot better, taking back half of yesterday’s losses, closing 0.7% or 40 points higher to just over 5942 points. The Aussie dollar is slowly pushing above the 78 handle against USD with the four hourly chart clearly indicating a breakout above this level is imminent:
The economic calendar tonight is all about the ECB as we await the latest musings and interest rate settings from the central bank. We also get a preview of the even more important NFP for tomorrow night with US initial jobless claims thereafter.