Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Nikkei was down 232.57 points at 8,493.77, while the Hang Seng
ended the morning up 256.7 points at 14,811.81.

Crude oil traded at $49.47 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

Citigroup and Bank of America (BoA) face the embarrassing prospect of asking for billions of dollars more in American taxpayers' funds after purportedly failing the US Treasury's financial stress tests.
US banks may seek billions more from taxpayers

Banks on both sides of the Atlantic are being warned by regulators that they must hoard additional capital to weather the recession and future economic storms, in another series of steps designed to limit the risk-taking that pumped up the industry's earnings during the credit boom.
Banks told to bolster their capital reserves

The rate of decline in US house prices slowed in February and consumer confidence among Americans rose by the greatest amount since 2005 during April, in early signs that the economic recession might be slowly beginning to thaw.
US housing price falls start to slow

As concerns over a swine flu pandemic continued to affect the financial markets, Moodys estimated in a research note on Tuesday that the macroeconomic impact of a mild flu pandemic could cost 1.4m lives and reduce global GDP by 0.8% or $330bn.
Moodys warns on swine flu impact

America's lead financial regulator is investigating as many as 150 hedge funds as it cracks down on fraud at the height of the recession.
SEC shines spotlight on 150 hedge funds

The primary risk to the gold price is a return of the "Goldilocks" economy, according to analysts at a firm of asset managers.
Goldilocks and the bear case for gold

NIKKEI 225	AUSTRALIA ASX200	SHANGHAI	HANG SENG

KOSPI	VIX	GOLD	NYMEX CRUDE

Nikkei is closed today.

AAL Nomura: upgraded to buy from neutral, tp 1800
ARM Jeffries: buy, tp 135
ARM Noble: negative
BLT Nomura: downgraded to reduce from neutral, tp 1600
BWNG Citigroup: upgraded to buy from hold, tp raised to 280 from 235
DEB Morgan Stanley: upgraded to overweight from equalweight, tp raised to 112 from 63
SSL UBS: upgraded to neutral from sell, tp raised to 455 from 410

End-of-day Market Overview