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World stock markets plunge

08 April 2009 07:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. Investors have sent stocks lower, extending a pause in a big four-week rally as the market girds itself for potentially grim earnings reports.
Earnings season gets under way later Tuesday with a report from Alcoa Inc., the first of the 30 companies that make up the Dow to post quarterly results. The giant aluminum maker is expected to report a loss after the market closes, setting the tone for potentially more dismal results to come.
In late afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 170.84, or 2.1 percent, to 7,805.01. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 16.86, or 2 percent, to 818.62, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 41.12, or 2.6 percent, to 1,565.59.
The Federal Reserve said that consumer borrowing dropped at an annual rate of $7.48 billion in February, or 3.5 percent, from January. Wall Street economists expected borrowing to slide by only $1 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
JPMorgan fell 18 cents to $28.02. Bucking the trend, Wells Fargo & Co. rose 8 cents to $15.33 and Citigroup rose 12 cents to $2.84.
Alcoa fell 17 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $7.74, weighing on other material companies.
Bond prices rose, pushing the yield on the 10-year note to 2.90 percent from 2.93 percent late Monday.
In other trading, the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 12.69, or 2.8 percent, to 434.87.
The dollar was mixed against other major currencies. Gold prices rose.
Light, sweet crude fell $1.93 to $49.12 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Overseas, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 1.6 percent, Germany’s DAX index lost 0.6 percent, and France’s CAC-40 fell 0.9 percent. Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 0.3 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.5 percent.