Asian shares remain on tenterhooks as mainland Chinese markets remained closed for a holiday and Japanese stock markets reopened sharply down in the wake of the selloff on Wall Street overnight. The USD remains relatively firm against most of the risk currencies with gold largely unchanged, with all the action in Bitcoin this morning as it flash crashed through the $40K level, having lost 20% since the start of the week, but bounced to the $43K this afternoon:
The Shanghai Composite remained closed with the Hang Seng Index putting in a scratch session after its previous big whallop, closing at 24098 points while Japanese markets reopened and immediately gapped lower with the Nikkei 225 losing more than 2% to 29839 points as it begins a rollover:
Australian stocks managed to pull off a small rise at the close, with the ASX200 finishing 0.3% higher at 7273 points but still well below previous medium term support as the Australian dollar also put in a modest blip, reaching but not breaching the 72.70 level as it remains depressed:
Eurostoxx and S&P futures are up around 0.5% with the four hourly chart of the S&P500 showing price bouncing back after being considerably oversold last night, but not yet indicating a move back above the previous support level at 4400 points:
The economic calendar is still pretty stark with US housing starts the main release to watch out for overnight.