Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Nikkei was recently down 144.35 points at 8,698.33, while the
Hang Seng ended the morning off 324.01 points at 15,256.15.

Crude oil was trading at $49.25 a barrel on Nymex.

Happy trading!

G.

Morning all. Market reports:

Telegraph
The Times
The Times (Need to know)
FT
The Guardian
The Independent
This is Money

A third all of junk bonds in Britain and Europe are likely to default over the course of this crisis as the debt-driven excesses of buy-out boom come back to haunt, according to a new report by Standard & Poor's.
S&P expects a third of Europe's junk bonds to default

President Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve's chairman, Ben Bernanke, both yesterday declared that they saw signs of progress towards economic recovery in the US but the latest retail sales data refused to cooperate with their coordinated confidence boost.
Obama and Bernanke hail signs of recovery

A sharp decline in Singapore's economy in the first three months of the year has triggered a de facto devaluation of the Asian country's currency.
Singapore devalues its fading dollar

Poland seems set to become the first nation to take advantage of the IMF's enhanced funding, agreed at the recent G20 summit meeting in London. Warsaw will use a $20.5bn (13.8bn) IMF "flexible credit line" to act "proactively" with the financial crisis before any serious damage is done to the currency or Poland's creditworthiness.
Poland benefits first from G20 funding

Russia is considering borrowing funds on international markets for the first time in a decade, amid a deepening economic recession. The move, revealed on Tuesday by Alexei Kudrin, finance minister, comes as Moscow seeks to plug looming budget deficits and help heavily indebted companies raise funds
Russia eyes overseas funds

Homebuyers are out in force and property sales have begun to rise, according to new figures. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said that the number of new buyer inquiries rose for the fifth consecutive month in March and at the fastest pace since September 2003.
Property sales come to life as hopes rise for end to falling prices

Retailers' hopes that the worst of the downturn is over were buoyed by solid trading over the crucial Easter weekend, but they cautioned against reading too much into a few days' trading.
Solid trading over Easter break cheers high street retailers

NIKKEI 225	AUSTRALIA ASX200	SHANGHAI	HANG SENG

KOSPI	VIX	GOLD	NYMEX CRUDE

ASHM UBS: reiterated buy, pt raised to 190 from 155
BVIC UBS: upgraded to buy from neutral, tp raised to 280 from 250
ENRC Citigroup: initiated buy, tp 600
FRES Cazenove[HB]: downgraded to in-line from outperform

End-of-day Market Overview