The economic calendar includes second quarter GDP from India, retail sales and industrial production from South Korea, retail sales and private sector credit growth from Australia, current account data from Thailand, and retail sales from Hong Kong.
There is also a data deluge from Japan, which includes retail sales, industrial production, unemployment, and perhaps most important of all, Tokyo inflation figures for August.
On the corporate front, earnings releases from Chinese financial giants Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, CITIC and China Construction Bank are also on tap.
It is worth noting where markets stand going into the last trading day of August. Especially bearing in mind the historic volatility and price swings that battered many markets earlier this month.
Japan’s Nikkei is down around 2% so far this month, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan is up 1.5%, world stocks and the S&P 500 are up more than 1%, the Nasdaq is flat, and China’s blue chip index is down nearly 5%.
The dollar index is down 2.6% and languishing at its weakest level of the year, although it has risen for two days in a row, while the yen is up around 3.7% and China’s yuan is up around 1.5%.
