A quick look at today: after closing at 7,310 the day before, ASX maintained a strong bullish bias that helped the index close higher at 7,344 today. However, market bears ensured the ASX topped out at 7,370 and that by the end of the session, the market had marked out a distinct 7,310 to 7,370 range.

At the same time, Australia NAB Business Confidence (Mar) released yesterday at 01:30 UTC with a figure of -1, while the previous figure was -4. Australia Westpac Consumer Sentiment (Apr) came out at 9.4, while a consensus of analysts was expecting 1.5.

ASX 200 made an initial breakout above its 50 day Simple Moving Average at 7,348.29, a potential indicator of a newly emerging bullish phase. Despite this, although ASX is appreciating today after rising as high as 7,370, price action is now slowing and consolidating around 6.7 points below the 7,350.6 resistance level. ASX's upper Bollinger Band® is at 7,386.66, this is a slight indication of a slowdown.

Overall, looking at the technical analysis landscape, it seems ASX likely to continue pointing upward in the short term.

Other markets are also showing gains as FTSE went up by 0.49% today, and closed at 7,824. Nikkei went up by 0.57% today, and closed at 28,083.

At the same time, Hang Seng is down to 20,300, losing 200 points, after ending the previous session around 20,500.

Also worthy of note, Australia Employment Change projected to come out at 20,000 — worse than previous data of 64599.99999999999; data will be released tomorrow at 01:30 UTC.

Furthermore, the market is looking at tomorrow at 01:30 UTC data for Australia Full Time Employment will be released, with an expected decline to 8,000 from the preceding figure of 74,900. As things stand, upcoming Australia Unemployment Rate data is projected to fall short of market expectations with newly published data of 3.6, following on from the preceding figure of 3.5. New data is set to be published tomorrow at 01:30 UTC.

The index has been trending positively for about 30 days. ASX has appreciated 10.08% over the past six months.