It was the final trading day for Chinese markets ahead of the week-long holidays. Markets close Tuesday 1 October and reopen on Tuesday 8 October. Over the weekend we had news of more stimulus from China, the People's Bank of China announced it'd be instructing banks to lower mortgage rates for existing home loans before October 31. In addition, three tier-1 cities (Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen) announced easings on home buying. Also from China today were disappointing September PMIs, both from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and S&P Global/Caixin. In the light of all the stimulus announced last week in China these were shrugged off, very emphatically. Chinese stock markets surged.

Japanese stocks, on the other hand, were smashed lower. Fingers were pointed at the prospect of higher interest rates, new PM Ishiba is in favour of BoJ normalisation. A four big figure drop in USD/JPY on Friday hasn’t helped either!

Japanese data releases showed better retail sales, but poor industrial output in August. A government official said production was weighed by poor weather – a typhoon! - and will bounce back in September.

In Japanese political news media reports are of a potential snap election being called for October 27.

From New Zealand we had improving business data. NZD/USD rose on the session, as did AUD/USD.

china Japan stocks 30 September 2024