- Trade war headlines are the flavor of the day once again as tariff tensions take down Chinese equities.
- Japan sees a bump on renewed confidence from the BoJ, but bearish tendencies remain close to the surface.
The Asia market session saw Japanese equities take a step higher and the remainder of the Pacific-Asia theater take a step down as trade war angst continues to saturate broader markets.
Japan saw some relatively healthy uptick in their domestic indexes thanks to a quick round of renewed confidence thanks to steady-yet-positive statements from both the Bank of Japan (BoJ) early in the day and a late press conference from the BoJ’s head chair, Hirohiku Kuroda, and Tokyo’s Topix index clipped into 1,815, up 0.65% for Tuesday with the Nikkei 225 index relatively steady at +0.16%.
In China, the Shanghai CSI 300 has fallen back by -1.10% with the Hong Kong Hang Seng falling by -1.60%, both of China’s major bourses declining as trade war tensions between the US and China continue to rise after Monday’s trade tariffs coming into effect, and the downside pressure is impacting emerging markets elsewhere, with the MSCI broad Asia-Pacific index declining by -0.65% while the Australian ASX 200 sits relatively flat, but still in the red by -0.05%.
Nikkei levels to watch
The Nikkei 225 is trading into 23,920, clipping even closer towards 2018’s all-time high of 24,120, though the recent rapid rise in the Nikkei leaves current action without technical support until the 23,000 major handle, the level that kept prices under wraps through most of 2018.
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