Macro Afternoon

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With the inversion of risk sentiment overnight following the latest Federal Reserve meeting, Asian markets were not expected to be boisterious today, not helped by the continued Golden Week holiday in Japan and with mainland Chinese markets also closed. Locally, the NAB profit release and cut in dividends sent the financial index and thus the whole ASX200 down, despite a lower Australian dollar from overnight.

The Shanghai Composite was closed while the Hong Kong based Hang Seng Index finished 0.6% higher to 29890 points, bouncing off local support at the 29000 point level so there’s still more upside potential here:

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US and Eurostoxx futures are up slightly, bouncing back from last night’s falls with the four hourly chart of the S&P 500 wanting to get back to it previous record high levels, or at least the September 2018 level at 2940 points, and with the 3000 point level the next obvious target:

Trading in the USDJPY pair is still dependent on low volumes with a bottom being found at the 111 handle today after making a new weekly low, with a small swing higher up to the high moving average on the four hourly chart unlikely to translate into further gains:

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Australian stocks fell at the open in response to the Wall Street selloff with the NAB print not helping matters as the ASX200 finished 0.6% lower to 6338 points. The Australian dollar remains depressed following the overnight rout due to the FOMC meeting, almost back to last week’s lows at the 70 handle:

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The economic calendar continues tonight with a big economic event – the BOE meeting for May. There’s also weekly initial jobless numbers in the US plus the latest factory orders.