Asia sells off into the week's four-clock wait — KOSPI drops 2.60%, and oil refuses to pay the Iran headline
Asia closed the week's first session in the red, and Korea did the most damage: KOSPI fell 2.60% to 6733.02, the region's worst performer overnight, with Hang Seng down 2.02% to 25484.40, Taiwan off 0.78% to 44872.42, and the Nikkei down a milder 0.44% to 65725.04. ASX 200 was the one green major, up 0.47% to 9101.60, on a session the resource complex carried rather than technology. US futures picked up that tone heading into the premarket — NQ down 0.43% to 29262.50 and ES off 0.12% to 7682.25 against Friday's close, itself a session where the S&P 500 finished at 7674.37 (+0.43%), the Nasdaq-100 at 29308.86 (+0.33%), and VIX fell 5.50% to 15.13.
The hard-asset rotation is now three separate trades at three separate stages, and each one is a ladder rather than a single ticker. Gold is the mature leg — the metal +14.0% on the month with the miners at +37.1% running well ahead of it. Crypto is the fresh break — one week old, holders up over 20% while the miner basket sat the week out. Materials is the early leg — copper miners +20.7% on the month, the sector fund barely warm, and our new resource-markets board opening at 9 of 10. This edition maps the vehicles rung by rung, for the two months the calendar makes interesting.