Market Updates for Today

China wows to support stock market, Asian shares jump

Asian shares jumped on Tuesday after China moved to support its stock market by buying shares of major banks, and the Euro held the previous session's big gains on hopes that European leaders are finally taking action to protect the continent's lenders.

World stocks clambered out of bear market territory on Monday after a pledge from German and French leaders to come up with a plan by the end of the month to tackle Greece's confidence-sapping debt woes and recapitalise European banks.

"I think it is significant that Germany and France came together to show they will not allow big banks to collapse," said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex Securities in Tokyo. "Hopes that there won't be an abandoned bank like Lehman will ease excessive worries in the market."

Global markets were buoyed after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said they would agree on how to recapitalise European banks and present a plan for accelerating economic coordination in the Euro zone by a G20 summit in Cannes on November 3-4

Executives tell Obama how to create jobs

President Barack Obama could create millions of jobs by attracting more foreign capital to the United States, helping entrepreneurs and being more aggressive in energy, business leaders said on Monday.

In a new report, the chief executives of GE, Intel, Boeing and other companies also backed White House proposals to fix infrastructure like airports, railways and electricity grids and to expand broadband Internet networks as a way to boost hiring and speed up flagging growth.

"If Washington can agree on anything, it should be this -- and it should be now," the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness said in the report, to be presented to Obama at a meeting in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.