Wall Street Today | Virgin Galactic jumps 32% as spaceflight ticket sales open

Asian stocks look set to rise Wednesday and crude oil held a tumble on speculation that geopolitical tension in eastern Europe will ease.

Oil fell after Russia said some troops are starting to return to their permanent bases, easing geopolitical tensions that have rallied prices.

Futures in New York closed down 3.6% after falling nearly $5 a barrel during the session, the most since November 30. Crude has swung wildly this week amid a flurry of reports about the tensions over Ukraine.

The New York Stock Exchange is stepping into the nonfungible tokens market with plans to do for digital assets what it does for stocks.

The NYSE said in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that it wants to be a financial exchange for cryptocurrencies and NFTs that would compete with the likes of Opensea and Rarible. The filing, dated Feb. 10, indicated plans for a NYSE-branded cryptocurrency and a marketplace to buy, sell and trade NFTs.

Sea closed 18% lower in New York on Monday after India banned its marquee game Free Fire, extending a selloff in its shares to 65% from an Oct. 19 peak. Its shares rebounded Tuesday and closed 16% higher, its biggest gain since November 2019.

For much of the last decade, the company has had about 600 reservations for tickets on future flights, with those tickets sold largely between $200,000 and $250,000 each. Alongside opening ticket sales to the public, Virgin Galactic also revealed it will replace the iris of Sir Richard Branson in its logo with a purple outline of its spacecraft.

However, there were more than 49 million people playing the game each day, up 33% from last year.

The company's stock was up around 4% in after hours trading.

As of Jan. 19, there were eight metaverse ETFs listed in South Korea, drawing over $1 billion in inflows, according to data from Samsung Asset Management, which launched two of the ETFs. More than 70% of the inflows into both domestic and global metaverse ETFs in South Korea are from retail investors, according to the data.

Top holdings in the ETFs include tech companies and chipmakers as well as stocks associated with South Korea's entertainment industry. The K-pop industry, with its global popularity, is expected to play an "integral" role in developing the metaverse, says Rahul Sen Sharma, managing partner of index provider Indxx.