Asian stocks have fallen sharply across the region, responding to the poor lead from Wall Street and then the wafer thin assurances from the Fed overnight, as S&P futures tumble amid some really fragile risk sentiment. Bitcoin is having yet another interesting 24 hours, getting back to the $50K level with a modest 10% gain since this morning, but still nearly 20% off its recent high from the start of the week:
The Shanghai Composite is down over 2% going into the close, currently at 3562 points while the Hang Seng Index has completely flopped, sinking nearly 3% to be back below 30000 points. Meanwhile Japanese markets couldn’t escape the carnage, with the Nikkei 225 finishing 1.6% lower at 29961 points as the USDJPY pair is slowly moving higher to almost get back to its start of week gap down point:
The ASX200 was the best in the region, relatively speaking, losing only 0.9% to be back below 6800 points at 6777 while the Australian dollar is still highly elevated and hanging on above the 79 handle despite the risk off mood:
Eurostoxx and S&P futures are tracking lower before the European opening session, down between 0.4% and 0.6% with the four hourly chart of the S&P500 still failing to break above the downtrend from last week’s high above 3950 points:
The economic calendar includes German consumer confidence and a swathe of US Treasury auctions.