10 Things You Need To Know Today

[thenews]

Here's what you need to know.

• Markets in Asia were mixed in overnight trading. The Japanese Nikkei rose 1.6%, but the Hong Kong Hang Seng fell 0.5% and the Shanghai Composite retreated 0.1%. European markets are in the red across the board, with Spain down 0.9%. In the United States, futures point to a positive open.
• Beginning at 10 AM ET, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will deliver a testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Bernanke may be questioned about the recent uninterrupted rise in the stock market and whether Federal Reserve policies are creating a bubble.
• At 2 PM ET, the Federal Reserve will release the minutes from the FOMC's April 30-May 1 monetary policy meeting. The big debate in the markets over the past two weeks or so has been whether the Fed could taper off bond purchases sooner than markets expect, so any discussion in the minutes that sheds light on this will be of interest.
• The Bank of Japan elected to keep monetary policy unchanged as expected at its May policy meeting after launching an unprecedented bond buying program in April. BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda acknowledged recent improvements in Japanese economic data, and said of the recent volatility in the Japanese government bond market, "At this point, I don’t think [recent JGB yield rises] will have a large impact on the real economy."

read more ...