Talking Points:
- Asian stocks rose across the board Monday
- Much of this was down to a lack of any further bad news rather than anything more solid
- The US Dollar came back up too, to the chagrin of gold bulls
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Asia Pacific stocks ended higher for a change on Monday as risk appetite returned to the markets, sending the US Dollar higher.
Some investors had feared that North Korea could undertake a new weapons test over the past weekend as part of a show of defiance on its national day, September 9. However, in the event there were no reports of such a thing although Pyongyang did make some threatening anti-US noises at the prospect of further UN sanctions, as now spearheaded by Washington.
A lack of bad news from the Korean peninsula seems to have overridden market worries about the impact of Hurricane Irma which has made damaging landfall in the US having ravaged the Caribbean. The Nikkei 225 ended up 1.4%, with all other major bourses firmly in the green. Weekend news of more relaxed Chinse bank capital requirements also seems to have lifted the general mood. It seems that Beijing is removing some of the more aggressive steps it put in place last year to limit capital outflows.
In the foreign exchange market the US Dollar rose back above 108 against the Japanese Yen, having been as low as 107.31 Friday. The session’s major economic data came from Japan, with machine orders rising, but the markets’ focus was elsewhere.
Spot gold prices lost about 0.8% as the greenback firmed up. Crude oil prices meanwhile edged up by nearly 1% on reports that Saudi Arabia has discussed extending output cuts with other producing nations. This news trumped for the moment any worries investors may have had about hurricane impact on prices.
The economic slate is thinly populated for the rest of the session, with Canadian housing starts and US consumer inflation expectations likely to top the bill. European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure will speak in Frankfurt.
--- Written by David Cottle, DailyFX Research
Contact and follow David on Twitter: @DavidCottleFX
