Most Foreign Markets Regain Ground
Most of stock markets partly recovered Tuesday in a seesaw session, but the key London market fell and nervousness about Wall Street’s behavior persisted.
The Tokyo stock market, the world’s biggest, soared from the opening bell to close sharply higher, erasing nearly all of Monday’s selloff.
The 225-share Nikkei index closed up 527.39 points, or 1.53%, at 34,996.08. It had plunged 647.33 points Monday following Wall Street’s 190-point fall on Friday.
The market in Frankfurt, West Germany, which suffered a record drop Monday, saw big gains in urgent buying. Market indexes also finished higher in Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Zurich, Madrid, Athens, Vienna, Stockholm and Oslo.
New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong also staged rousing recoveries after the previous day’s losses by both Asian and European markets.
The upward and downward moves were much less dramatic than Monday’s gyrations, which followed Wall Street’s Friday the 13th slump.
In London, the Financial Times 100-share index fell 27.9 points, or 1.3%, to close at 2,135.5.
The London session was jittery with the key index swinging 61.5 points from a session high of 2,182.3 in the first 15 minutes of official dealings to a low of 2,120.8 in the last 40 minutes of trading.
But that was less dramatic than Monday, when the London index fell more than 200 points and then mostly recovered to finish with a 70.5-point decline.
Dealers said London was buffeted throughout the session by crosscurrents from Wall Street and fears about the U.S. trade figures.
The Dow Jones industrial index was down 27.87 points, or 1%, at 2,629.51 at about the time London closed.
“Everyone is still very nervous about the down side,” said a dealer with the London investment firm UBS Phillips & Drew. “Also, buyers who passed up bargains Monday decided to hold off today to see if they’d come back later in the week.”
Trading disruptions continued in Europe on Tuesday. The Brussels exchange had computer problems for a second day, preventing significant trading since Friday.
In the morning, European stock prices followed Tokyo’s climb on relief over New York’s relatively strong finish Monday, which suggested that an all-out crash appeared to have been averted.
But European share prices fell in the afternoon on worse-than-expected U.S. trade figures and on a subsequent weak opening on Wall Street.
The U.S. trade deficit increased to $10.77 billion, compared to market expectations of around $9.1 billion.
The German stock index (DAX), which had plunged 12.8% in its worst one-day drop ever Monday, soared 89.72 points, or 6.4%, to 1,475.44.
Frankfurt’s trading volume even surpassed Monday’s frenzied pace as small retail investors rushed to buy back some of the stocks they had dumped, and institutional funds exploited lower prices to boost their holdings.
But the early enthusiasm soon gave way to a more sober assessment and profit taking late in the session, which was extended by one hour to process all the orders.
The Madrid stock market’s general index rose 5.96 points, or 2%, to a close at 311.18. The index fell 6.5% on Monday.
In Zurich, the Swiss market index rose 82.3 points, or 5.1%, to 1,705.2. It declined 10.5% in the previous session.
The Athens stock exchange general index rose 42.65 points, or 9.4%, to 497.79. It dropped 10.05% on Monday.
