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Asian, Pacific markets down; Wall Street slips

Business Materials 22 October 2008 10:47 (UTC +04:00)

Stocks in Asian and Pacific markets slumped solidly into negative territory Wednesday, taking their lead from Wall Street, where mixed corporate earnings reports gave investors pause Tuesday.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei was down 6 percent in early afternoon trading. In Australia, the All Ordinaries index also slipped, losing 2.8 percent, reoirted CNN.

South Korea's KOSPI was down 4 percent, while the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was off 2.8 percent.

The Taiwan Weighted gave up 1.6 percent. In Singapore, the Straits Times index was off 3.6 percent.

Poor earnings results cut into optimism on Wall Street coming off Monday's 400-point rally.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 231 points, or 2.5 percent, Tuesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 3.1 percent, and the Nasdaq composite lost 4.1 percent.

With 21 percent of S&P 500 companies already having reported results, third-quarter profits are on track to have fallen almost 10 percent from a year ago, according to the latest estimates from Thomson Reuters, a company that tracks corporate information.

Markets were mixed in Europe on Tuesday.

The CAC 40 in Paris posted a three-quarters-of-a-percent gain, while London's FTSE 100 and the XETRA DAX in Frankfurt lost a bit more than a percent each.

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