With core China market still closed, activity in Asia remains rather subdued. The trend is still constructive, following the steady US session but volumes continue low. The Nikkei closed up over 1% as currency drifts weaker and JGB’s are a touch softer. Hong Kong played catch-up and traded strong all day, closing over 2.25% firmer […]

With Japan being one of the few markets that were open in Asia, most of the conversation was centred around Spain, TANKAN, DXY, UK’s Conservative Party conference and then the tragic events of Las Vegas. The Nikkei traded well, closing near the mornings highs with momentum provided by the strong confidence survey (TANKAN). With this […]

The Nikkei lost just a smidgeon today but still holds levels way up on the year. The YTD number is just over 6% because much of the rally was in Q4 2016, so on a 1yr basis is up almost 22%. The Yen continues comfortably mid 112’s but with more weakness expected. Elections will be […]

It was a mixed day for Asia even after we heard late news from the US on the proposed tax reforms. Having seen the Hang Seng and Shanghai markets closing better when others were weaker today we saw the opposite reaction. With declines for the HSI of -0.8% and just -0.1% for the Shanghai we […]

In Asia we saw a similar picture to yesterdays market movers with Shanghai and the Hang Seng both closing higher whilst the Nikkei, ASX, KOPSI and SENSEX all closed lower. The SENSEX lost the most ground today (-1.4%) as it continues to add to its recent losing streak, making this its seventh day in a […]

  The late headline from North Korea yesterday spooked Stocks, Gold and Treasuries but had broadly lost most of that by the end of the Asian time zone. Both the KOPSI and Nikkei lost around -0.3% on the day with exporters and tech suffering in the afternoon session. US indices did manage to recover much […]

  The German election was on par with the global trend that is rising up against the establishment as we have known it. Angela Merkel has been accused of weakening her respective coalition partner. The election result of the Bundestag election shows that not only the SPD has to worry about losing ground, but the Union […]

As you would expect the topic conversation this morning has been the German election and the re-election of Angela Merkel. The highlight was always going to be the percentages of the peripheral parties and that is what we saw. Markel’s CDU party was the big loser yet retained victory for the fourth time. This result […]

The Australian ASX was probably over-sold yesterday and therefore stood as the only core that performed today. Closing up +0.5% was a healthy recovery after yesterdays 1% decline. China’s downgrade put a small dent in confidence for the cash markets which took the Hang Seng down -0.8% while the Shanghai closed with just small loss. […]

After the unchanged call from the Federal Reserve, within hours we hear the same from the Bank of Japan. Asian equity markets drifted broadly lower with profit-taking the main reason behind many of the moves. The Nikkei continues slightly under recent highs with another small gain (+0.2%) to add to recent advances and was helped […]