Markets in Asia have started the week on the back foot as more concerns around the global economy continue to linger.

The ES futures have started the week down around 1% and that is dragging on the key risk pairs such as the AUD/USD and NZD/USD. There are hopes of some progress on trade this week, but most of the attention will turn to some of the key data points. The main one being US jobs which are due for release on Friday.

Early in Asian trade GOLD is sitting $1527, which is just above key support that has been holding. While BTC remains below the key $10,000 mark.

Last month was a good one for US equity markets based on the fact that they finished the month trading around the highs. It was a funny turn of events given that all the headlines would have made you think we were down sharply. However, there were three occasions where the SPX fell 2.5%, suggesting volatility is high still.

Asian Market Outlook

There is a busy week ahead for the Aussie and it will start today with Chinese manufacturing PMI. However, the key events will of course be the RBA where rates are expected to remain on hold.

However, the RBA should be taking some guidance from both GDP and retail sales. If you recall, the Government passed on a tax break and that should be reflected in the retail sales number this week.

So if that number doesn’t perform well, that it could be a very weak sign for the economy overall.

Both the Aussie and Kiwi ended the week soft and has started in the same fashion, so we could be seeing plenty of red this week.

More on the Aussie in the next few hours as we’ll have a closer look at the China data and what is in store for the week ahead.