Macro Afternoon

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The rout on American stocks lead by Facebook last night translated into a similar, if somewhat subdued selloff here in Asia, with Chinese stocks coming through unscathed. Bonds and commodities were relatively unchanged as well, while currency markets rallied against the USD after big reversals overnight.

The Shanghai Composite fell again at the open but recovered and then some to close 0.2% higher at 3258, still a little shy of the key 3300 point level. The Hang Seng Index put in a scratch session, gaining a handful of points to close at 31520 points, with the daily price still gravitating around the high moving average band, but unable to breach rolling ATR resistance above at the 32000 point level:

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S&P futures are pulling back, with support at 2700 points the natural uncle point here touched last night, but it could ugly again on the open:

Japanese stocks again fell the most even as Yen weakened throughout the session, with the Nikkei 225 closing 0.4% lower to 21380 points, no longer range bound but in the midst of a sustained dip. The USDJPY pair rallied later in the afternoon and is threatening its long held uptrend here and last week’s late highs around the 106.40 level:

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The ASX200 gapped down as expected but recovered slightly to finish only 0.4% or 23 points lower to 5936, with the major banks swapping gains with big iron ore players the losses. The Aussie dollar is trying vainly to climb out of its cratered bottom here at the 77 handle, but the four hourly price pattern plus momentum is pointing to another breakdown:

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The economic calendar continues with two major European releases tonight, first its the UK CPI print for February, then the closely watched ZEW sentiment survey in Germany.