Wall Street in late declines

European markets were significantly higher on the session Tuesday as they attempted to recover from last week’s declines. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 added 2.01 percent to 1,548.24. The Dax was 1.71 percent higher to 7,584.14 in Frankfurt, while the Paris CAC-40 gained 1.85 percent to 5,751.08 and Madrid’s IBEX jumped 2.03 percent to 14,802.4. Banks were mixed but mostly higher, while airlines and carmakers both saw gains on the day. Property investors also saw advances, but the telecommunications sector dropped on disappointing earnings reports and the engineering sector saw declines on rumors of a new shares issuance.

There were also substantial gains in London, where the FTSE 100 added 2.48 percent to 6,360.1 and the FTSE 250 was 2.26 percent higher to 11,321.9. Insurers, miners and caterers were all higher, was were airlines, homebuilders, oil equipment component makers. The chemicals sector and property investors saw declines.

Wall Street was higher at midday trade on mixed economic data, but by the end of the session new problems for a subprime lender had sent the New York markets into negative territory. At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 1.1 percent lower to 13,211.99, while the Nasdaq Composite had dropped 1.4 percent to 2,456.27 and the S&P 500 was down 1.3 percent to 1,455.27. The media sector was mixed on mergers news, while a fast-food chain gained on an offer. Computer makers gained but carmakers were lower.

Most Asia-Pacific equities markets were higher on Tuesday. The exception was the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo, which dropped 0.2 percent to 17,248.89. The Topix index, however, closed barely higher at 1,706.18 and the Mothers market was 1.38 percent higher to 864.7. Some banks were higher on quarterly results. The electronics sector was mixed on results and other news, while the steel sector declined on news of an anti-trust investigation. There were gains in the cameras sector on positive broker comment.

Elsewhere in the region, Australia’s S&P/ASX200 added 0.58 percent to 6,144.2, while the Sydney Ordinaries were 0.67 percent higher to 6,187.5. In China, the Shanghai Composite gained 0.68 percent to 4,471.03. The Straits Times index in Singapore was up 1.17 percent to 3,567.46, while in South Korea the Kospi index added 1.39 percent to 1,933.27. India’s Sensex was 1.9 percent higher to 15,550.99 and the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong climbed 1.96 percent to 23,184.94. In Taiwan, the Taiex jumped 2.37 percent to 9,287.25 after having dropped 6.9 percent in the past four sessions.

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