Asian stocks are trying to emulate the rebound from Wall Street overnight but its been weak across the board with mainland Chinese stocks pulling back further. The USD remains super strong against the major currency pairs although Yen has given up some of its defensive bid while the Australian dollar lifted slightly on today’s unemployment print. Meanwhile oil prices are just holding on, with Brent crude remaining above the $94USD per barrel level while gold has slumped below recent weekly support at the $1700USD per ounce level, heading to a new monthly low at $1686:
Mainland Chinese share markets continued their selloffs with the Shanghai Composite down more than 1% to 3199 points while the Hang Seng Index went the other way, finishing some 0.5% higher at 18937 points. Japanese stock markets had a slim push higher, as the Nikkei 225 closed 0.2% higher at 27875 points with the USDJPY pair is trending slightly higher to try to pullback the overnight losses, hovering just below the 144 handle:
Australian stocks came back but only barely with the ASX200 finishing just 0.2% higher at 6842 points. The Australian dollar had equally meek gains, barely rising to be just above the mid 67 level and still near its recent weekly lows:
Eurostoxx and US futures are again holding on here as we go into the London session with the S&P500 four hourly futures chart still showing quite depressed price action which is being held below short term and possibly psychological long term resistance at the 4000 point level as momentum remains flat:
The economic calendar includes the latest US retail sales and industrial production prints for August.