Asian market preview 31/03/2008

US markets fell on Friday, to end the week in the red after rallying in the beginning of the week. Markets fell as profit warning from JC Penney raised concerns about slowing consumer spending while more analysts' warning made financial stocks tumble as well. More dividend cuts and a forecast of further 25% drop in banking shares really hurt financial sector. CPI data which only showed a small increase in prices, which means that inflation is not really a concern for the markets, did not help much for the decline on Friday in a rather thin trading session. The Dow fell 86.06 pts or 0.70% to 12216.40, S&P500 fell 10.54 pts or 0.8% to 1315.22 while Nasdaq fell 19.65 pts or 0.86% to 2261.18. More bad news are expected this week in the labor department on unemployment data and also on manufacturing data. Analysts predict markets may fall further if the unemployment rate hit 5%.

Asian markets may take a breather today after huge rally last week following the tumble in Wall St on Friday. Markets may open lower today and may extend losses on concerns about US economic slowdown and if investors want to sit out and wait for more news to come out of the US. However, more window dressing action may take place if investors still think that they want to collect stocks and make their companies' report look nice. Crude oil was recently traded around $104ish per barrel, gold traded around $926.50ish and JPY rose against US$ to 99ish. Nikkei futures closed at 12700 on CME compared to the close of 12855 here on Friday.

The Kospi may start the day lower around 217ish and may fall further on global economic concerns and if investors want to enjoy little bit of profit in the midst of uncertain times. Conflict with N.Korea may cause the Kospi to fall further today if investors are concerns that the conflict will spread bigger. Some late window dressing action may take place and prevent the market to sink too much if there are more window dressing actions.

Hangseng may start the day lower today after rallying for the past 5 sessions. It may start around 23000ish and may fall further below 23000 today if investors decide to enjoy some profit ahead of more news to come out of the US. Hangseng may rely on the mainland stocks to take direction in these uncertain times.