| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nikkei tumbles below 8,000
TOKYO, Japan -- Japan's Nikkei average has tumbled to fresh 20-year lows at the opening on Tuesday as speculation that war in Iraq was imminent plus selling by banks and insurers continued to hit blue-chip shares such as Sony Corp. Sony, the world's biggest consumer electronics maker, dipped 2.38 percent to a 17-month low of 4,100 yen. The Nikkei average was down 1 percent to 7961.72 shortly after the opening after closing down 1.25 percent at 8,042.26 on Monday, its lowest since March 1983. The broader TOPIX index had lost 1.02 percent to 776.52 in early trading. Amid signs of official alarm over crumbling confidence, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily reports that the government and Bank of Japan are considering massive liquidity injections and yen-selling intervention to shore up the financial system. Revised gross domestic product data for the October-December quarter released on Tuesday showed no change from sluggish preliminary real growth of 0.5 percent from the previous quarter. Many analysts had expected the figure to be revised up to about 0.7 percent, Reuters reports. In South Korea, the key Kospi indicator continued to trade lower, off 1.14 percent to 538.06 amid ongoing security fears on the Korean peninsula. Further south, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 started the day poorly sinking 1.2 percent to 2709.30 as noon approached. Big international players BHP Billiton and News Corporation bother suffered, the former off A15c to A$8.59, the latter shed A28c to $A9.28. Major telco Telstra was a rare bright spot, firming A1c to A$4.38. In New Zealand, the Top 50 index had shed 0.2 percent in value to 1686.36 by mid afternoon while in Singapore the Straits Times marker shed nearly half a percent to 1208.02 on the opening. Reuters contributed to this report.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
