Sydney - Australian stocks regist

Indian equities started the week negatively tracking hopeless global cues and heavy selling action witnessed by FIIs as well as retail investors.
The Sensex touched the 8,000 mark, while the Nifty embraced the 2,300 level during intra-day. Afterward, it recovered some lost ground on account of short covering and buying by domestic institutional investors.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Tuesday celebrated Diwali at evening when the index posted a sharp 547-point gain taking back some eagerness among investors after five days of decline.

Indian equities ended the week on a positive note on Friday (Oct 31), on account of continued buying action across board in frontline stocks.

Though the stock market lost its way for a moment during afternoon trading because of a negative closure on the Asian stock markets and a weak start in European markets, frenzied buying action in the final hour of trade boosted it to a strong closure on yesterday.

The US Federal Reserve cut bank rates by 50 basis points, and various other central banks are likely to follow suit sooner than later.

New York - Wall Street stock indices closed higher on Friday, ending one of the best weeks in three decades, as banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co moved to tackle the housing crisis at the centre of the economic downturn in the United States.

JPMorgan Chase said it would suspend foreclosures proceedings as it works to modify the terms of 110-billion-dollars worth of mortgages. Financial shares gained 12 per cent on Friday.

Frankfurt - The Frankfurt Stock Exchanged altered its rules Friday to prevent its three main indexes ever being distorted again by a crisis like this week's short squeeze on Volkswagen.

Stock in the German carmaker tripled on Monday and Tuesday to 1,000 euros a share after luxury car company Porsche revealed it owned or had options on 74 per cent of the stock. In August the stock had hovered near 200 euros.

Riga - The three Baltic stock exchanges ended the week quietly Friday, with relatively small movements recorded at the close of trading.

The NASDAQ OMX Tallinn exchange in Estonia was up 0.31 per cent, the Vilnius exchange in Lithuania was down 1.35 per cent and the Riga exchange in Latvia dipped by 
0.59 per cent.

The Baltic Benchmark Index (BBI), which includes data from all three exchanges, closed down 0.26 per cent at 273.18.