OREANDA-NEWS. September 22, 2011. US stocks slumped on Wednesday with Basic Materials (-5.17%) and Financials (-4.76%) as the laggards. S&P 500 index lost 2.94%, Russell 2000 Index – 3.68%. VIX jumped by 13.57% to 32.86. FOMC statement brought little surprise – “twist” operations scale will reach USD 400 bn.

Statistics were neutral – Existing home sales rose by 7.77% to 5.03 mn.

EURUSD closed near 1.36 as S&P cut its rating on 7 Italian banks.

Asian indices slumped on Thursday. Nikkei declined by 2.07%. S&P/ASX was down by 2.63%. Korean Kospi lost 2.89%. Hang Seng slumped by 4.23%. Shanghai stock indices were on average down by 2.0%.

The European stock indices futures opened lower in the morning - Dow Jones Stoxx 50 futures lost 2.87% while Dax futures was down by 3.16%. S&P futures lost 0.69%.

US weekly jobless claims, due at 12:30 GMT and Leading Indicators for August, due at 14:00 will be in focus in the US today.