A mixed day here in Asia as stock markets stumble instead of surging following the bigly increase on Wall Street overnight. The USD is coming back against the commodity currencies in particular with sharp falls in Aussie, Kiwi and Loonie although notably Yen remains firm as US equity futures also pullback.
The Shanghai Composite is falling sharply at the close, currently down 0.5% to 2812 points while the Hang Seng Index has taken back most of its prior gains, down 0.8% to 24247 points, as its nascent breakout pauses (or runs out of steam):
Japanese share markets are somewhat mixed with the Nikkei 225 closing slightly lower at 19550 points, while the USDJPY pair continues to slowly deflate back to its previous weekly low, now just above the 107 level:
The ASX200 also slipped, falling 0.4% after being up briefly on the open, closing at 5466 points despite the Aussie dollar sharply reversing its recent gains, retracing straight through the 64 handle in the afternoon session:
Eurostoxx futures are down 0.4% while S&P futures are off nearly double that with the four hourly chart still showing a lot of internal strength as it remains above last week’s high above the 2800 point level:
The economic calendar includes advanced retail sales and US industrial production figures for March tonight, with the Bank of Canada having its monthly meeting plus the latest DOE oil inventory report.