by Chris Becker
Outside of Australian stocks, its been a good start to the trading week here in Asia, with the somewhat positive mood from Wall Street on Friday translating into mild gains today. Currencies are relatively quiet, although Euro is shooting out the gates and gold is starting to look bullish going into the European session.
In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite has bounced back sharply after its poor week previously, up over 2% to 3289 points while in Hong Kong the Hang Seng Index is about to put in a scratch session after being down earlier in the session, currently at 25111 points. The daily chart shows the full retracement of the big breakout above the 25000 point barrier:
Japanese stocks is also slipping into scratch mode with the Nikkei 225 up only 0.1% to be at 22717 points while the USDJPY pair surged on the weekend gap open well above the 107 handle but has retraced half that move to be back at its Friday position near the 107.20 level:
The ASX200 opened higher for only a few minutes and then fell throughout the day to finish 0.5% lower at 6001 points, while the Australian dollar is equally stuck going nowhere at just below the 70 handle:
Eurostoxx and S&P futures are up only slightly going into tonight’s session that has a few Euro-centric economic events. The four hourly chart of the S&P500 still looks choppy despite the previous tilt higher, with price still gravitating around the 3200 point level:
