Asian shares finish the week with a flourish, with green results across the board as optimism grows over a potential positive outcome to the trade talks between the US and China. USD remains firm against the Asian major pairs with both the Aussie and Kiwi retreating while gold also fell a few dollars per ounce.
The Shanghai Composite is up nearly 1% going into the close, currently at 2585 points with the Hang Seng Index also putting in a very solid session, up by 1% to 27037 points. The daily chart is building strongly here and ready to tackle the previous falsebreak high above 27100 points:
US and Eurostoxx futures are both up going into the London open with the four hourly S&P 500 futures chart now ready to break through the daily lows breached before the December correction:
Japanese stock markets gave the best results in the region, helped by a much weaker Yen with the Nikkei 225 closing 1.3% higher to 20673 points. This was mainly due to a much higher USDJPY pair as the risk on proxy pushed higher well above the 109 handle, ready to make a new weekly high:
The ASX200 finished 0.5% higher to 5879 points, really getting some positive momentum now as it builds over the 5800 level and looking quite bullish on the daily chart. The Aussie dollar fell back a little slightly after breaking through the 72 handle overnight, but still has very solid support at the 71.50 level:
The economic calendar finishes the week with a few American centric releases, namely the Canadian CPI print then the U. of Mich. Sentiment survey, followed by the Baker Hughes oil rig count.