by Chris Becker
Stock markets are having mixed sessions across Asia with gold continuing its big falls from overnight, cracking the $1900USD per ounce level going into the London fix, with silver also crashing through the $24USD per ounce level:
In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite was down sharply before the lunch break, almost by 2% but has managed to fill half of that gap to finish nearly 1% lower at 3310 points. In Hong Kong the Hang Seng Index has eked out a minor gain after its big move yesterday, reaching only 0.2% higher to be just below 25000 points again. Japanese stock markets had modest sessions with the Nikkei 225 closing 0.4% higher at 22843 points, with the USDJPY pair continuing to lift, now through its July support level at 106.70 (upper black horizontal line):
The ASX200 was down most of the day, not helped by poor earnings result from CBA and others, including gold miners, but rallied towards the close to eventually finish only 0.1% lower at 6132 points. Meanwhile the Australian dollar broke through key support at the 71.40 level on the latest consumer sentiment figures, but it too has covered half of that loss in the afternoon in line with other undollar assets, but almost making a new two week low:
Eurostoxx futures are down 0.5% while S&P futures are up slightly with the S&P500 four hourly chart still showing growing support at the ATR level around 3330 points. The key index to watch remains the NASDAQ, which remains in dip mode at a two week low:
