by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
There were some big smiles across the faces of many equity traders today as we have seen some of the strongest markets gains in a while. The Nikkei closed +0.4% but could not match the performance of the Shanghai or Hang Seng Indices when they closed up at almost 2% on the day. We saw some mixed data out of Japan when the index was down over 1%, so to close higher on the day was an achievement! In late US trading, the futures contract gained an additional 3% from the cash close. We saw a little unfriendly economic data (manufacturing) earlier from China, but yesterday’s cut of the RRR overshadowed all of those to achieve the 2% gain.