BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stock markets faltered Friday amid worries over the health of Europe's banks and fears that the continent's debt crisis might be spreading beyond a handful of small economies.
Japan's Nikkei 225 Index fell 1 percent to 8,401.32. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 1.4 percent at 18,556.38. South Korea's Kospi fell 1.6 percent to 1,834.70.
Benchmarks in mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia also fell.
Investment sentiment soured Thursday after Europe ? which dominated so many of 2011's financial headlines ? became a concern again.
Trading in UniCredit, a large Italian bank, was halted after the stock lost a quarter of its value. The bank said Wednesday that it would need to offer huge discounts to investors to raise money.
And a financial crisis deepened in Hungary, which had to pay a staggeringly high interest rate of 10 percent on its 12-month debt. That is far above the 7 percent level that forced Greece and Portugal to seek bailouts.
Taken together, the news raised fears that Europe's debt crisis would spread from small countries such as Greece and infect much larger ones such as Italy that are too big to be bailed out.
In the U.S. on Thursday, investors were encouraged by a report on the U.S. job market. Weekly unemployment claims declined again, one day before a crucial report on the national jobs picture in December.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a tiny decline to end at 12,415.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 0.3 percent to close at 1,281.06. The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 2.5 percent to 2,669.86.
Benchmark oil for February delivery fell 40 cents to $101.38 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell by $1.41 to end Thursday at $101.81 in New York.
In currency trading, the euro rose to $1.2795 from $1.2782 late Thursday in New York. The dollar was steady at 77.18 yen.
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