10 things you need to know before European markets open
Chinese stocks opened up. Fresh from two days of utter carnage, further monetary policy easing from the PBOC and restrictions on some forms of futures trading, Chinese stocks have opened Wednesday's session higher, and the Shanghai Composite is currently up 2.2%.
And Chinese regulators took action to limit speculation. The China financial futures exchange (CFFEX) just announced a swathe of measures designed to limit market speculation. In a release today CFFEX stated that margin requirements for futures trading had been raised along with transaction fees. They will also restrict trading positions in some stock index futures.
Other Asian markets are up. As of 6:50 a.m. UK time (1:50 a.m. ET) Hong Kong's Hang Seng is up 0.32% and Japan's Nikkei is up 2.84%.
US markets surged and then slumped on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, the Dow was up as many as 420 points in a big bounce after Monday's 588-point loss. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were also up nearly 3% early in the day. The market, however, couldn't hold on to its gains in a disappointing close, and the Dow finished about 600 points off its highs while the S&P had its biggest one-day reversal since October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
South Korea is willing to discuss the end of sanctions on the North. South Korea is willing to discuss North Korea's demand for an end to sanctions imposed over a 2010 naval attack, the South said on Wednesday, a day after the rivals struck a landmark pact that defused a standoff between their forces.
A Brazilian money launderer says a former presidential candidate took bribes. Convicted Brazilian money launderer Alberto Youssef testified to lawmakers at a congressional hearing on corruption on Tuesday that former opposition presidential candidate Aecio Neves took bribes from a corruption scheme involving Furnas, a subsidiary of state-run power utility Eletrobras.
US regulators have rejected a major utilities merger. Utilities regulators for the District of Columbia on Tuesday denied Exelon Corp's $6.8 billion bid for Pepco Holdings, dealing a major blow to a deal that would have created the country's top power distributor.
Carlos Slim's Mexican telecoms group is being investigated by regulators. According to the Financial Times, Slim's TelMex fixed-line telecoms group is being probed over whether it's strayed too much towards a satellite television service.
China and Japan are engaged in a battle to build Indonesia's first bullet train. China and Japan are locked in an increasingly heated contest to build Indonesia's first high-speed railway, with the Asian giants sweetening deals and turning up the charm as time runs out to woo Jakarta.
A former JP Morgan analyst has been charged over an insider trading scheme. A former analyst with JP Morgan Securities and two longtime friends have been charged with an insider trading scheme from which they are alleged to have made more than $600,000 (£382,150) in illegal profits, US authorities said on Tuesday.