It’s been an interesting day here in Asia with most action on currency markets as shares continued their cautious mood from the falls on Wall Street overnight. The BOJ meeting and NZ CPI print caused the most movement, as the PBOC weakened Yuan again, offshore trading tumbled sending the pair back to its Friday low.
Chinese shares were the most stable with the Shanghai Composite unchanged going into the close. The Hang Seng Index was also steady, only losing 0.1% to 26988 points. The daily chart shows how important it is for the market to get back above the previous falsebreak high above 27100 points:
US and Eurostoxx futures are down slightly going into the London open with the four hourly S&P 500 futures chart still indicating some support at the 2630 point level but I’m watching for the BTFD crowd to step in soon herE:
Japanese stock markets were generally down, with the TOPIX losing 0.6% while the Nikkei 225 only closed a few points lower to 20593 points. This was mainly due to a steep rise in the USDJPY pair on the back of the BOJ meeting with a clear break of yesterdays downtrend and back up to the start of week level at above 109.50:
The ASX200 slipped around 0.3% to 5843 points, unable to build on the positive momentum and continuing its inability to get back above psychological resistance at 6000 points. The Aussie dollar is trying vainly to find a bottom here before tomorrow unemployment print and is relatively stable at the 71.40 level:
We’re supposed to be getting a slew of US economic releases tonight, but Donald hasn’t worked how you need to turn the key to the left, not extreme right, to open the government. So who knows when the releases will be?