Kayaking in the Cook Islands, 2019: Photo by H. Becker
The expected follow through of risk taking from Wall Street has not occured in Asia today with scratch sessions throughout the region on stock markets. Bitcoin has fallen back below the $19000 level again, while gold has stalled out above the $1800USD per ounce level following its bounce overnight:
The Shanghai Composite is up only one point after its long lunchbreak, currently at 3452 points while in Hong Kong the Hang Seng Index is down 0.4% to 26465 points. Japanese stock markets are also going nowhere with the Nikkei 225 barely moving at 26807 points while the USDJPY pair is stretching itself here, unable to advance much further above the 104 handle, not even reaching last week’s intrasession high:
The ASX200 has also absorbed the GDP news without much fuss, closing only 0.1% higher to 6590 points, while the Australian dollar tried to run away above 74 cents but was thwarted and is being held back at where it started nearly 24 hours ago – still in a bullish position, but without forward momentum:
Eurostoxx and S&P futures are in retracement mode, with the four hourly chart of the S&P500 showing a pullback to the 3650 points level as last night’s move higher may yet prove unsustainable despite the probable fiscal stimulus coming from Congress (when though?):
The economic calendar continues tonight with German retail sales and Euro wide unemployment data for October.