In other news...
🇨🇳 Today, markets may be reacting to the news that the People’s Bank of China is preparing a major, unorthodox monetary easing plan to help restructure trillions of dollars of local government debt owed to the countries’ banks.
The plan, known as Pledged Supplementary Lending, will work similarly to the long-term refinancing operations, or LTROs. Under the PBOC’s plan, banks would be able to swap local government bailout bonds for loans. The plan is an acknowledgement of the magnitude of the problem brought on by rampant on- and off-balance-sheet borrowing by local governments to ramp up an investment-led growth cycle for which the country is now paying the price. Data show that the central government has been unable to curtail the borrowing binge, with the debt in the local government sector jumping by 50% since mid-2013.
U.S. oil prices ended with a modest gain, after a brief spike following the news that Iran seized a Western cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
🇺🇸 U.S. stocks rose as a number of positive quarterly earnings reports helped offset a continued decline in the biotechnology sector.
🇺🇸 The U.S. Apr consumer confidence index from the Conference Board unexpectedly fell -6.2 to 95.2, weaker than expectations of +0.9 to 102.2 and the lowest in 4 months.
🇺🇸 Twitter shares closing down 18.18% as earnings came out earlier than expected after a website reported the results in a tweet.
🇬🇧 UK Q1 GDP rose +0.3% q/q, weaker than expectations of +0.5% q/q and the slowest pace of expansion since Q4 of 2012.
🇨🇳 China's Shanghai Composite Index fell -1.13% after it posted a new 7-year high on concern the surge in stock prices has lifted valuations to unrealistic levels.
🇯🇵 Fitch Ratings cut Japan’s sovereign-credit rating one notch to ‘A’ from ‘A+’ with a stable outlook, saying “the Japanese government did not include sufficient structural fiscal measures in its budget for the fiscal year” beginning this month to offset the effects of the delay in the sales-tax increase.
🇯🇵 Merger between U.S.-based Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron to create one of the world's largest chip-making equipment fell apart due to opposition from U.S. anti-trust regulators. Shares of the latter plummeted 14.8 percent on the news.
Gold prices notched a three-week high, as investors awaited the result of the Federal Reserve’s two-day monetary policy meeting. Price now, $1,212.
FCPO (RM2,093) closed to its lowest level since 22 September 2014. Selling was led by bearish sentiment on increasing productions and slow demand. Technical sell stop when price broke below 2,100. Indicator turn negative and price may move to 2,000.
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