US equities finished higher in another round of fairly quiet trading on Wednesday, underpinned by upbeat economic data out of China and Japan overnight.

Sales at Resolution, owner of Friends Provident, have fallen 28% so far this year.

Two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers have been found not guilty of fraud.

Neptune's Alex Breese has been cutting a number of cyclical stocks in his Special Situations fund to buy into recent market laggards.

Interest rates have been held at 0.5% by the Bank of England for the eighth consecutive month.

China has the potential to be the world's next asset bubble, PSigma Investment Management suggests.

Deutsche Bank has launched the first ETF fund to track the inverse performance of an Asian stock market.

UK Retail investors continued to pull money out of F&C funds over the three months between June and September despite a pick up in worldwide equity and bond markets.

The US economy has come out of recession, with annualised growth of 3.5% in the third quarter of 2009.

European markets opened up 1.0% this morning (FTSE Eurofirst 300 and FTSE 100) led by the banks and commodity stocks.