A solid down day here in Asia for stock markets in response to the falls on Wall Street and in Europe overnight as risk aversion starts to creep in. The local unemployment print had little effect on the falling Australian dollar while bond markets are remaining flat as well.
The Shanghai Composite was down before the lunch break but is coming back a little going into the close, currently up 0.1% to 2814 points while the Hang Seng Index is having a second day of losses, down 0.8% to 23974 points, as its nascent breakout runs out of steam:
Japanese share markets fell the most with the Nikkei 225 closing 1.2% lower at 19310 points, losing all confidence while the USDJPY pair sharply broke out of its recent funk to be almost through the 108 level after previously deflating back to its weekly low, but this looks short lived:
The ASX200 dropped more than 2% at the open before finishing down only half that at 5416 points. Meanwhile the Aussie dollar kept selling off through the unemployment print but found a lot of buying support right on the mid 62’s – which is the GFC low from 2008:
Eurostoxx futures are down a little while S&P futures were off earlier in the day but have squared up so it could be a flat session tonight as prices find support near the 2750 point level on the four hourly chart:
The economic calendar is pretty busy tonight with US initial jobless claims (tremendous – the best you’ve seen, trust me) plus US housing starts and then Moody’s re-rating of UK sovereign debt.