Asian Equities See Green | Investing.com

Asian stocks move higher

After a few days of adverse price action, the FOMO gnomes appear to have run out of patience on the sidelines, and Asian markets were broadly higher this morning. Another positive, albeit modest, session from Wall Street appeared to have been enough to flush buyers off the sidelines today. Flows in regional equity markets may also have been distorted by month-end and quarter-end flows from institutional investors.

Overnight, Wall Street rose slightly with the finishing 0.03% higher, the 0.19% higher, and the 0.06% higher. The closes were new all-time highs for the NASDAQ and S&P 500. Futures on all three climbed by around 0.10% in Asia, further boosting sentiment.

At time of writing, the was unchanged after disappointing data, but the shrugged that off to rise by 0.40%. Slowing PMIs in China were offset by the PBOC adding liquidity via the reverse repo once again and seeing the and 0.25% higher. eased by 0.25%.

powered higher by 0.95% today, led by banks and M&A activity, while remained under pressure from COVID-19 and politics, falling 0.35%. was 0.15% higher, with climbing by 0.75%.

Telecoms and an asset sale by Telstra (OTC:) led Australian markets higher today, after a few torrid sessions. Despite more COVID-19 cases and expanding restrictions across the country, the rose by 0.60%, and the by 0.50%. One suspects the month-end and quarter-end flows were definitely at work in Australia today.

Wall Street looked to have moved to the side-lines ahead of the month, and quarter-end flows and ahead of PMI and Employment data. Those same flows were at work today in Europe, but I expect a modestly positive start after it shrugged off the virus blues yesterday. Given the high potential for whipsaw moves over the next couple of days, watching from the sidelines out of the noise could well be a wise strategy.

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