Morning Meeting: The chinese congress opening bell

Good Morning.

Let's start the day with Greece whose lawmakers yesterday night approved the austerity measures needed to unlock bailout funds. According to acting Parliament speaker Athanasios Nakos: the bill on pension, wage and benefit cuts was approved with 153 votes in favor in the 300-seat Parliament. The austerity bill's approval is the first of the vote required by November 12 to get a 31 billion euro aid tranche and avert a financial collapse. Parliament will meet again on November 11 to vote on the 2013 budget, just a day before euro-area finance ministers meet to discuss whether to unlock the funds.

The Greek vote was unable to offer support to Asian markets where Japan's Nikkei Stock Average fell 1.61% to 8,828.13, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 1.44% to 21,782.11, while the Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.19% to 2,080.70 as the Chinese congress started today to choose its politburo's Standing Committee, the top leadership body, whose changes will be closely watched by international investors as it could lead to shift in China's economic policy. Vice President Xi Jinping is widely expected to become the next general secretary of the Communist Party of China's Central Committee and soon after take over as China's president from current leader Hu Jintao. Li Keqiang, one of China's vice premiers and, like Xi, a current standing committee member is expected to take over as premier, replacing Wen Jiabao.

From the congress China's statistics chief said that people will be “more confident” about the nation's fourth quarter economic growth when October data are released tomorrow, according to Bloomberg news.The bureau is due to report industrial output, retail sales and inflation figures for October and fixed-asset investment for the first 10 months of the year. Industrial-output growth probably accelerated for a second month to 9.4 percent, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey.

Meanwhile, Macroeconomic data released today in Japan highlighted Japan's economic worries as core machinery orders down by a larger-than-expected 4.3% in September. In a separate releases, the Finance Ministry said September's current-account surplus narrowed by a sharp 69% to an unadjusted ¥503.6 billion below a projection from Nikkei and Dow Jones Newswires for a ¥762.3 billion surplus.

News from Greece and Japan were unable to shake the currency market where the common currency fell versus the greenback 0.14% to 1.2753$ and the USD lost ground versus the YEN trading 0.11% lower to 79.90 as investors sought refuge assets.

Commodity wise, China's statistic chief words supported the Oil market where WTI rose 0.72% to 85.05$ a barrel, the same path was followed by the yellow metal, which gained the positive territory during the asian session trading 0.28% higher to 1,718.80$ an ounce.

All eyes in Europe will be for the ECB policy meeting later in the day, as it is expected to keep interest rate unchanged but as we said yesterday few player are speculating that yesterday ECB chief's comments aimed to prepare the ground for a potential cut today.

In US jobless claims are expected to be little changed over the last week. The number of jobless claims issued is forecast to rise to by only 2,000 in the seven days to November 3, from 363,000 to 365,000. Initial jobless claims for the week ending October 27 fell 9,000 to 363,000, while the prior week was revised up 3,000 from an original 369,000.

The question now is: Are we in a new trend? Will the market extend yesterday's move?

Difficult question to answer;  as traders we looks at market prices and we use the macro picture as framework to build our hypothesis, we will look at our levels to see how the market will react, this is the reason why it's so important to have your what if statements plugged in your game plan.

Have a great day.

Originally posted at www.77sigmatrading.com