Asian stocks decline ahead of the week’s central bank action

• Pacific-Asia session equities are stepping back slightly ahead of a dense week.
• Trade tensions  have been temporarily supplanted as traders await movement from the BoJ in the early week, as well as the US Fed later.

Asian stocks are on the trepidatious side in a week full of central bank meetings, interest rate decisions, and a weakening Yuan pressuring Chinese equities.

The Bank  of Japan (BoJ) will be wrapping up a multi-day monetary policy meeting on Tuesday, to be followed by a press conference expected sometime after 02:30 GMT tomorrow, and a decreasing Yuan which saw a slide into multi-year lows last week is seeing hesitancy in Chinese equities, and the broader Asia session is seeing a step back for the new trading week.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index is down -0.60% and Tokyo’s Topix index is back -0.30 for the day, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index is down -0.67% for Monday; Shanghai’s CSI 300 index is also in the red for -0.35%, with Australia’s ASX 200 bourse declining by -0.34%.

Nikkei levels to watch

Japan’s leading equity index saw muted action to end last week near where it started, and with Tuesday’s approaching BoJ policy statement sideways action can be expected to continue for Monday, with the index twisting near 22,500.00; a bullish showing from the BoJ could see the Nikkei climbing back into one-month highs near the 23,000.00 major technical level, while a disappointing showing will see bears taking back control and pushing the major equity index back dow to recent swing lows between 21,500.00 and 21,750.00