James McGlew

The China-U.S. trade war and the Hong Kong protest are combining to cast a negative pall on Asian markets today, hong Kong protests have been dragging on for a while and the view from the financial world is that it's really starting to bite now. The further this drags on it's certainly going to be very negative.

(The deal is) also taking a view on housing construction market in the United States which does appear to be heading in a positive direction, with interest rates now rising, it will be interesting to see how that impacts on the growth particularly in the domestic building market.

The big story today really is the banks, nearly two-thirds of the increase in the index today is due to the financials, quite clearly there's an expectation following last week's rate drop that their margins aren't going to be squeezed as tightly as markets were originally thinking.