Wall Street was up right after the Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it was cutting its main interest rate by half a percentage point to 3 percent, but the markets ended the session lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.3 percent to 12.442.83 while the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.38 percent to [...]

Most equities markets in the Asia-Pacific region were higher on Monday, helped by healthy sales on “Black Friday” in the United States, the traditional beginning of the Christmas shopping season and the traditional day when retailers turn to profit for the year. The exception to gains in the region came on the Shanghai Composite, [...]

Wall Street closed lower on mixed signals concerning the subprime crisis. While Bears Stearns’ (NYSE: BSC) CFO said that his company will take $1.2 billion in write downs in the fourth quarter, less than had been feared, HSBC (LSE: HSBA; NYSE: HBC; Euronext: HSBC; SEHK: 005) warned that it will have to write down [...]

Europe’s markets saw declines on Thursday as banks were lower. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 dropped 1.55 percent to 1,570.92. The IBEX was down 0.82 percent to 15,759.6 while the Dax dropped 1.73 percent to 7,880.85 and the CAC-40 fell 2 percent to 5,730.92. Banks were at the top of the loser boards [...]

European markets were mixed Thursday, with more losers than gainers. The gainer was Madrid’s IBEX, which added 0.5 percent to 15,507.1. Elsewhere, the pan-European FTSE Eurofirst 300 was down 0.78 percent to 1,572.92. In Frankfurt, the Dax dropped 0.8 percent to 7,921.4. The Paris CAC-40 fell 0.89 percent to 5,767.24. [...]

Equities markets in London were lower in Friday trade. The FTSE 100 fell 0.3 percent to 6,466.8 while the FTSE 250 was 0.02 percent lower to 11,037.4. Miners were mixed. Lonmin (LSE: LMI) added 7.39 percent to £36.49 on a rise in platinum prices and on the possibility that Xstrata (LSE: XTA) [...]

Tokyo’s markets were lower Tuesday as they reopened after Monday’s Respect for the Aged Day holiday. The Nikkei 225 dropped 2.02 percent to 15,801.80, while the Topix index fell 2.19 percent to 1,510.95 and the Mothers market was 2.64 percent lower to 620.42. Banks were lower on continuing fallout from Northern Rock’s (LSE: [...]

Most equities markets in the Asia Pacific region saw gains on Friday. The major exception in Asia was India’s Sensex, which dropped 0.07 percent to 15,603.8. The Shanghai Composite added 0.73 percent to 5,312.18, while the Straits Times index was up 1.02 percent to 3,536.4. The Sydney Ordinaries gained 1.14 percent to [...]

Equities markets in the Asia-Pacific region were mixed on Monday, with losers outnumbering gainers. Many markets were hurt by news that there were fewer jobs in the United States in August as well as on new data showing that Japan’s economy contracted by an annualized rate of 1.2 percent in the second quarter of [...]

Asia-Pacific equities markets were mixed again on Friday. In Taiwan the Taiex was up a bare 0.01 percent, or 1 point, to 9,018.08, while the Straits Times index closed at 3,488.97. The S&P/ASX200 gained 0.44 percent to 6,278.4 in Australia, while the Sydney Ordinaries added 0.5 percent to 6,296.5. Decliners included India’s [...]