Here's a quick summary from Street.com. I thought it summed up last night quite well.
MikeM(From Florida)
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Dollar/yen rose as high as 142.05 in the Asian session but has since come off those highs on comments from the Ministry of Finance's administrative vice minister, Koji Tanami. Tanami indicated that Japan is ready to intervene on the yen's behalf, and suggested that the G7 has agreed to work together to prevent further slides. Idle talk, as seen by the currency market, but enough to put a cap on the yen's slide for the day. The yen was down 0.18 to 141.46.
That decline in the yen didn't do a lick of good for the Asian markets. In Japan, the Nikkei slid 325.22, or 2.1%, to 15,014.04, a five-month low. The Nikkei declining toward 15,000 is a reason for concern in and of itself: below that level, many institutions that hold stocks on their books (allowed by Japanese accounting laws) will see unrealized losses. That is something that the government is loath to see. A spurt of public fund buying to prop up the index seems likely to be in the cards.
In Hong Kong, those fears that the drops in the yen will force China to devalue the renminbi continue to plague traders. Reports that currency speculators are again shorting the Hong Kong dollar did little soothe nerves. The Hang Seng dropped 93.30 to 7886.07.
European stocks were down in thin volume -- with the World Cup on, it's hard for investors to keep focused on the task at hand. In France, the CAC was off 22.12 to 41876.47, while in London, the FTSE was off 45.7 to 5941.7. Germany's markets were closed for a holiday. |
