A bath of blood was avoided in the start to the new trading week here in Asia despite the big falls that has taken Wall Street closer to correction territory on Friday night, coupled with rising tensions over Ukraine/Russia. The USD remains very strong against most of the majors, with the Australian dollar still well below the 72 handle while safe haven buying in Yen has abated somewhat, and gold holds on to its recent uncorrelated strength below the $1840USD per ounce level, but unable to make new daily highs. Meanwhile, the bottom that fell out of Bitcoin on Friday continues to scrape even lower, touching the $35000 level on the reopen:
Mainland Chinese shares are quite resilient, helped by another PBOC interest rate cut with the Shanghai Composite slightly up at 3526 points going into the close, while the Hang Seng Index is pulling back, currently down nearly 1% at 24719 points. Japanese markets finished slightly higher eventually with the Nikkei 225 closing 0.25% higher at 27588 points while the USDJPY pair came back slightly to almost climb above the 114 handle but still very depressed:
Australian stocks had suffered a milder selloff than expected with the ASX200 closing only 0.5% lower but still making a new monthly low at 7139 points, as the Australian dollar remains below the 72 handle as it tries to make a new weekly low as the USD proves too strong:
Eurostoxx and Wall Street futures are trying to build somewhat going into the London open, with the S&P500 four hourly chart showing price trying to maintain its downtrend trend to the September 2021 lows at the 4250 level after taking out all of recent support:
The economic calendar starts the week with a slew of flash manufacturing and services PMI prints on both sides of the Atlantic.