Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Hang Seng closed the morning down 18.02 points at 17,844.77, while the Nikkei was recently down 9.41 points at 16,391.16.

New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for November delivery, was down 1 cent at $57.58 a barrel from $57.59 in late US trade overnight where it slipped to as low as $57.48, a level not seen since December 27th, 2005.

Early broker notes:

LOGICACMG UPGRADED TO 'BUY' VS 'NEUTRAL' AT GOLDMAN SACHS
BARRATT DEVELOPMENTS CUT TO 'HOLD' VS 'BUY' AT DEUTSCHE BANK
CARPHONE WAREHOUSE CUT TO 'HOLD' VS 'BUY' AT DEUTSCHE BANK
INFINEON STARTED 'OVERWEIGHT' AT JP MORGAN
CSR, ARM, STMICROELECTRONICS STARTED 'UNDERWEIGHT' AT JP MORGAN
SEVERN TRENT CUT TO 'UNDERWEIGHT' VS 'EQUAL-WEIGHT' AT MORGAN STANLEY

Happy trading!

G.

Morning all. Nice to see that BARC flew up to 714 at one point yesterday. Let's hope it gets there again today and carries on going up. All depends on speculation I suppose.