Macro Afternoon

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Subdued trading in Asia today with Chinese stock markets closed, as Japanese did the heavy lifting, taking the poor Friday night Wall Street lead and running with it. Perhaps a holiday in China today is a good thing with the tit-for-tat trade war looming with the US, can we next get Trump’s twitter account on holiday?

The Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng Index were both closed.

S&P futures are slipping alongside Eurostoxx, the latter down 0.4% as caution reigns. The former’s four hour chart is telling here with a bearish rounding top and no new session highs since the mid-week Fed rate rise:

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Japanese stocks took a big hit with the Nikkei 225 closing about 0.75% lower at 22680 points, unable to climb above considerable overhead resistance at the May high and closing in on short term support at the low moving average:

Yen was bid on safe haven pressure with the USDJPY pair falling as a result, but not gapping down as much as I expected. The four hourly chart suggests a possible dip down to trailing ATR support at or slightly below the 110 handle, an opportunity to go long in this meandering trend channel:

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The ASX200 actually put in a positive close, the only one in the region to do so, up 0.1% to finish at 6104 points, finally able to climb above 6100 again. This was mainly the result of the Friday night slump in the Aussie dollar, which is finding a temporary bottom of support here just above the 74 handle, but could break on any further falls in commodities:

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The data calendar is fairly sparse tonight with a speech by Super Mario Draghi at a conference in Portugal the only event of note.