| schema:articleBody
| - Major European stock markets slumped in late trading Friday, mirroring losses in Asia as Wall Street kicked off another round of tech bashing in what analysts say is an overdue correction. As European markets closed, the Dow Jones index showed a loss of 2.0 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had given back 3.1 percent in midday trading ahead of an extended Labor Day weekend. The Nasdaq had already lost 5.0 percent on Thursday as investors cashed in on big gains racked up in August, a move that had been forecast earlier in the week. "Stay-at-home stock valuations were out of control and while many investors will likely buy every dip, with fading fiscal support, risks remain that we could see this unwind last a little longer," Oanda senior analyst Edward Moya remarked. Oil prices were sharply lower as well. In Europe, stock markets had been boosted earlier by news that Spanish banks Bankia and CaixaBank were mulling a merger. Spanish savings conglomerate Bankia said in a statement late Thursday that it had made contact with CaixaBank "with a view to a potential merger". The deal would create a Spanish banking titan, with more than 650 billion euros ($770 billion) of assets, in a sector battered by the effect of the coronavirus on the wider economy. Madrid's market managed to limit overall losses on the news. New York trading had also started slightly higher Friday after the US Labor Department said that the unemployment rate fell to 8.4 percent in August, in large part owing to temporary hiring for the national census. Asian markets on the other hand, fell deep into negative territory following painful losses Thursday on Wall Street as profit-taking set in after months of mind-boggling gains. The drop had been expected after the Nasdaq climbed around 80 percent from its March trough, with more and more analysts warning that valuations were out of sync with economic realities. The closely-tracked US jobs numbers showed meanwhile that the wider economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, as it added 1.4 million jobs in August, broadly in line with analysts' forecasts. US employment is nonetheless still well below where it was in February, and some economists warned that without census hiring, the August report was actually weaker than it appeared. The government has hired nearly 600,000 workers in the past two months. London - FTSE 100: DOWN 0.9 percent at 5,799.08 points (close) Frankfurt - DAX 30: DOWN 1.7 percent at 12,842.66 (close) Paris - CAC 40: DOWN 0.9 percent at 4,965.07 (close) Madrid - IBEX 35: DOWN 0.2 percent at 6,989.70 (close) EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 1.7 percent at 3,249.67 New York - Dow: DOWN 2.0 percent at 27,734.51 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 1.1 percent at 23,205.43 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: DOWN 1.3 percent at 24,695.45 (close) Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 0.9 percent at 3,355.37 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1813 from $1.1852 at 2100 GMT on Thursday Dollar/yen: UP at 106.34 yen from 106.19 yen Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3223 from $1.3281 Euro/pound: UP at 89.33 pence from 89.23 pence Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 3.0 percent at $42.75 per barrel West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 3.6 percent at $39.90 burs-wai/spm
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)