Global stocks tumble after Wall Street losses

Joe McDonald, The Associated Press</span>
Published Wednesday, September 5, 2018 12:17AM EDT
Last Updated Wednesday, September 5, 2018 5:08AM EDT

BEIJING -- Global stock markets tumbled Wednesday after Wall Street sank on losses for tech and health care companies.

KEEPING SCORE: In early trading, France's CAC 40 fell 1.2 per cent to 5,280.68 points and Germany's DAX lost 0.7 per cent to 12,118.98. London's FTSE 100 shed 0.5 per cent to 7,420.91. On Tuesday, the CAC 40 dropped 1.3 per cent, the DAX shed 1.1 per cent and the FTSE 100 lost 0.6 per cent.

ASIA'S DAY: The Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.7 per cent to 2,704.34 and Tokyo's Nikkei 225 retreated 0.5 per cent to 22,580.83. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 2.6 per cent to 27,243.85 and Seoul's Kospi declined 1 per cent to 2,291.77. Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 shed 1 per cent to 6,230.40 and India's Sensex was 0.8 per cent lower at 37,829.13. Benchmarks in Taiwan, New Zealand and South Asia also declined.

WALL STREET: Drugmakers and big technology companies including Facebook and Google parent Alphabet slumped. Banks rose on higher interest rates. Nike declined after it gave an endorsement deal to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, known for his protests of police brutality and racial injustice. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 0.2 per cent to 2,896.72. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 12 points to 25,952.48. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.2 per cent to 8,091.25.

TRADE TENSIONS: The United States is due to resume talks with Canada on changing the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Trump administration is poised to impose new tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods as early as this week.

ANALYST'S TAKE: Stocks "bear the brunt of fears over trade tensions," including "more difficult" NAFTA talks and U.S.-Chinese disputes, said Jingyi Pan of IG in a report. "Momentum can certainly be seen waning" in the S&P 500, and improvement would require a "good turn in U.S. trade relations," she said.

AMAZON: The online retailer became the third publicly traded company and the second in the United States to reach $1 trillion in market value following Apple Inc. Amazon has risen from an online bookseller to a behemoth that sells toilet paper, TVs and a wide range of other goods. It is expanding into health care, advertising and cloud computing. The net worth of its founder, Jeff Bezos, has risen to $160 billion. The Chinese oil company PetroChina Ltd. temporarily had a stock market value of $1 trillion in 2007 but has fallen sharply since then.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude declined 76 cents to $69.11 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract lost 7 cents on Tuesday to close at $69.87. Brent crude, used to price international oils, shed 52 cents to $77.63 per barrel in London. It gained 2 cents the previous session to $78.17.

CURRENCY: The dollar gained to 111.47 yen from Tuesday's 111.40 yen. The euro declined to $1.1567 from $1.1582.

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