Asia
Already fragile sentiment in Asia-Pacific equities was dealt a heavy blow today after the Dow Jones fell by a staggering 831 points overnight, its third worst points fall in history.
The Nasdaq’s 4% fall was even larger than the Dow and S&P 500, so it was tech, which has driven the bull market in recent years, that led the losses.
Inevitably, China and Hong Kong were left heavily exposed. The Shanghai Composite, which has been under great pressure in recent months, fell over 5% on the day to 2,583 points. The tech-exposed Hang Seng was off over 3%, while Japan’s Nikkei shed nearly 1,000 points on Wednesday’s close to 22,590 points, a loss of nearly 4%.
Europe
Considering the heavy falls in Asia and sense of panic on Wall Street, Europe’s losses were relatively modest, with falls of around 1% on the FTSE 100, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX. On the FTSE 100, housebuilder Barratt (BDEV) took an early plunge of over 9%.
The UK’s midcap FTSE 250 was off nearly 2% though in early trading.
North America
US consumer price inflation is the highlight of the economic calendar this week. Today’s data is expected to show a slight rise on August levels of 2.2% to 2.3% in September.
Walgreen Boots (WBA) reports earnings today.
This week sees third quarter earnings season kick off in traditional style with the Wall Street banks reporting earnings. JP Morgan (JPM) is first out of the blocks on Friday, although once again tech firms will be in the spotlight after last earnings season's Facebook crash.
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