Outside mainland China its been a solid day again here in Asia, with stock markets finishing their best week since February. Currencies were largely unchanged with gold prices also slipping, but futures are looking good going into the European session.
The Shanghai Composite was unable to breach the next resistance level at 3200 points, losing about 0.3% to finish 3163 points. The Hang Seng Index is having a much better time of it, closing 1% higher to finish at 31114 points in building on its breakout. This takes it well above the recent daily highs that were forming a resistance level at 30500 and sets up for a return to longer held resistance at the 32000 level:
S&P futures are slowly building here again with the four hourly chart still pushing well above the 2700 points level:
Japanese stocks have shrugged off the overnight surge in Yen with the Nikkei 225 lifting over 1% to finish at 22758 points, breaking out of its recent sideways funk.. The USDJPY pair tried to regain its downward move overnight early in the session, but gave it all back this afternoon and is stuck at 109.30 going into the City open:
The ASX200 was the laggard again, putting in a scratch session and unable to make further gains past the previous set of highs, finishing at 6116 points. The Aussie dollar is still coming back, lasting longer than I expected as it heads to the mid 75s against USD, almost matching last week’s intrasession high. That’s the area to watch tonight:
The economic calendar ends the week with a speech by Super Mario at the ECB (actually Florence) followed by the Uni of Michigan sentiment survey and a private oil rig count.