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| Money
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| Stock markets fall on US worries |
| Stock markets worldwide have fallen as investors continue to worry about a possible US recession
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 3-March-2008
10:12:45 AM |
| Wall Street shares edged modestly lower in early New York trade, with the Dow Jones index down 0.4% after a 2.5% drop on Friday, which stoked the falls.
The UK's FTSE 100 index was down 1% at 5,825.6, while Germany's Dax dropped 1.4% and France's Cac fell 1.3%.
Earlier, shares across Asia, excluding China's mainland market, were hit after the bleak US economic data on Friday.
Tokyo's Nikkei index tumbled 4.5%, while India's Sensex index shed as much as 5%.
Weak US
Weak US consumer spending figures, gloomy comments from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and disastrous results at insurer American International Group (AIG) have helped to unnerve investors.
HSBC, the last of the UK's "big five" banks to report annual results, warned that its future looked uncertain, despite reporting that profit rose 10% to $24.2bn in 2007.
Banks and financial firms were the biggest fallers across Europe, with UK's HBOS falling more than 5%, and hedge fund group Man down 4%.
"The medium term is very difficult to predict as there are a lot of unanswered questions around banks' balance sheets," said Thierry Lacraz, strategist at Swiss bank Pictet.
Exporters suffer
Earlier on Monday, shares fell across Asia on concerns that flagging US consumer demand would hurt profits at the region's exporters, which are some of the region's biggest employers.
Shares were also hurt by a weakening dollar, amid fears that it will cut the value of exporters' foreign earnings.
The dollar fell to its lowest level against the yen for three years. In early trading in Tokyo it was as low as 102.90 yen and it fell to that level again in afternon Europe trade.
Japan's main Nikkei 225 index closed down 610.84 points at 12,992.18, its lowest level for six weeks, with carmakers Toyota and Honda bearing the brunt of the sell-off.
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