Soros Moves Away From Commodities, Weakening Yen A Concern

Asian stocks had a strong rally in the overnight session with Japanese stocks reaching 5 year highs pushed by strong consumer sentiment numbers from out of the US. Investors took risk on positions moving away from gold and silver and into the stocks markets.

The Japanese economic Minister Akira Amari last night commented that a further weakening in the yen could be detrimental to the Japanese people and also to the ability of the government to be able to handle it. Although this left the markets relatively untouched as Japanese stocks particularly utilities performed suberbly with the Nikkei passing the 15,000 target and reaching points not seen since 2008.

US consumer sentiment data also fueled US stocks to close on fresh highs on Friday.

Stocks
The Nikkei 225 in Japan moved up 1.38per cent and the Japanese Topix Index gained 1.4 per cent, which marks a 48 per cent gain since the same time last year making this is the biggest mover of all indexes so far this year. The weakening of the South Korean currency, the Won, helped the Kospi index there gain 0.20 per cent, even with further tensions between north and south and the North’s missile testing this weekend. The Shanghai Composite in China reached seven month highs last week and continues to increase, boosted by Chinese home price data with the price of homes gaining in 68 out of the 70 recorded cities this month.

Forex
The dollar traded lower in the Asian session, with the USD/JPY declining 0.45 per cent following remarks of Japanese Minister, the AUD/USD gaining 0.33 per cent after Goldman Sachs suggesting the AUD will continue to fall against the greenback. The EUR made slight gains yet stays at near 2 month lows against the greenback .

Commodities
The better than expected data from the US last week weighed heavily on the commodities and specifically the precious metals. Gold lost 1.64 per cent to trade at 1342.15 and Silver freefell by 4.86 per cent. George Soros we are told has moved away from his positions in precious metals. Natural Gas was up again by 1.55 per cent while Crude Oil dropped 0.26 per cent .

What to watch today:
Data Releases from the UK on private sector house price inflation with expected strong numbers should push up the GBP against the dollar. You can expect the continued low volume and downtrend in the commodities as risk on sentiment continue with investors moving to the stocks. Canada, Norway and Switzerland are closed today for public holidays.