Major Asian stocks displayed mixed trends today. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ended over 2.2 per cent down, and China’s Shanghai Composite index fell half per cent. Conversely, Singapore’s Strait Times index added over half per cent and South Korea’s Kospi rose over 0.3 per cent. The market in Japan was closed for a holiday today. Earlier,the People’s Bank of China held its benchmark lending rates unchanged for a fifth straight month. The one-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) was maintained at 3.1 per cent and the five-year LPR was also unchanged at 3.6 per cent.
Major European indices were trading in negative territory. Germany’s DAX was trading over 1.3 per cent down, CAC 40 was trading almost one per cent down and London’s FTSE 100 had dropped 0.12 per cent, when reports last came in. Meanwhile, the Bank of England has kept interest rates unchanged at 4.5 per cent amid rising global uncertainty and concerns over stubbornly high inflation.