Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Hang Seng ended the morning up 2.24 points at 17,034.99, while the Nikkei was recently up 39.18 points at 15,503.47.

Gold traded at $649.70-$650.20 per oz.

New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, was up 8 cents at $75.89 a barrel from its close of $75.81 in the US overnight.

Early broker notes:

LONMIN CUT TO 'UNDERWEIGHT' VS 'NEUTRAL' AT HSBC
COOKSON UPGRADED TO 'BUY' VS 'NEUTRAL' AT MERRILL LYNCH
NATIONAL EXPRESS UPGRADED TO 'BUY' VS 'HOLD' AT CITIGROUP

Happy trading!

G.

Good morning all

So far all the banks reporting this week has reported better than expected results

Good morning all.
Their bad debts have also increased LW.

Morning All,

Point taken about dept. P but as we know It's usually the masses that eventually pay for dept and the banks provision is usually in the price.

Midday Market Roundup

interest rates up .25%

Its not going to make any difference to the debt situation

When banks make more provisions, they just charge more elsewhere to recover the costs.

National Savings have reduced the payout several times this year to 2.9%, talk about cheap borrowing for Brown

I just spoke to the FC of a large european co. They were complaining that if they don't use IBAN to transfer funds to me, their bank will charge them an extra 15. I told them tough - if they do, our bank will charge us an extra 37.50 - (25). Told him, he has a choice - pay the extra 15 or I increase our costs by 37.50 to cover it!

Hes going to go away and think about it. Thats how the UK banks make so much money - charging UK companies for receiving funds from overseas.

Closed all my positions in my spreadbet account. Lucky for me I had a Short on the UKX, which cancelled on the loss on the long BP. I think I'm going to wait for the dust to settle before trading again (lets see how long that lasts ;-)!)

A period of reflection? what a good idea.

Personally I fear that this rate rise + one probably tomorrow from ECB could be the trigger for another big sell-off that has been threatening for a little while. Certainly no time to buying.

End-of-day Market Roundup