Asia morning update: Rosy situations

Asian markets which had played a strong suite so far certainly looks to continue roaring ahead of China’s 19^th Party Congress’s commencement.

Another high

The week’s open once again finds the market buying last week’s laggard with the telecoms and financial sectors leading the S&P 500 index to yet another record close. After last week’s disappointing subscriber report, AT&T was seen rebounding 1.3% on Monday with news of Brazil’s antitrust regulators set to approve its buyout of Time Warner.

The main draw had however been with financial stocks as the sector stroke up a 0.64% uptick in the session. While some credit had been lent to Fed chair Yellen’s reinforcement of confidence towards growth on Sunday, the key driver in the change had likely been the emergence of economist John Taylor in the run for the Federal Reserve’s top post. News that the likely advocator for increased rate hikes had made an impression with President Donald Trump had the market pre-positioning once again. Beside a slight lift in US treasury yields, the US dollar further clawed back some of last week’s losses as the US index edged up to trade just below 93.40 when last checked. Having said that, the broad market still has eyes set on the two most likely candidates, Jerome Powell and Kevin Warsh, though the decision does indeed look more like an event risk right now.

Asian markets

Following the reinforcement of strong PPI numbers out of China, Asian markets had certainly made greater headway with its rally. As exhibited in the MSCI Asian Pacific ex-Japan index, prices ended the session at another 10-year high while the likes of the HSI and Nikkei 225 have also seen their multi-year records. With the optimism sustaining in the US market and supported crude prices overnight, Asian markets are only expected to sustain in this glow today.

Notably, Singapore’s September non-oil domestic exports (NODX) arrived below consensus this morning at -1.1% year-on-year (YoY), against the market’s 12.7% expectation. The key electronics exports sector had been one to weigh at -7.9% YoY. The local STI had however shrugged off this piece of data in the early hours, having witnessed last week’s Q3 growth surprise, and is trading in line with the broad market situation. Prices have popped above the 3330 resistance, placing the next resistance, July’s 3354.71 high, in sight.

Yesterday: S&P 500 +0.18%; DJIA +0.37%; DAX +0.09%; FTSE -0.11%