Asian stock markets today ended up except Singapore's Straits Times, which tumbled 0.4 percent. On the contrary, Japan's Nikkei-225 climbed 1.4 percent, China's Shanghai Composite index gained 1.1 percent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.3 percent and South Korea's Kospi index added 0.2 percent.
 
The European markets were trading down in intra-day trade. London's FTSE-100 and Germany's DAX, both declined 0.2 percent each. France's CAC-40 was trading 0.7 percent down.