The U.S. stock market should open sharply lower on Tuesday amid a worsening nuclear crisis in Japan that affects all of world stock markets on Tuesday del'Asie to Europe. Futures on Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq 100 retreat respectively of 2.28% to 1261.10 points from 2.27% to 2337.50 points. On Monday, the New York Stock Exchange ended down slightly as the market tried to assess the consequences of the violent earthquake that hit Japan, especially in the energy and nuclear power: the Dow Jones lost 0.43% to 11 993.16 points, the Nasdaq 0.54% at 2 700.97 points and the Standard & Poor's 500 fell 0.60% to 1 296.39 points.
The nuclear crisis has deeply aggravated in Japan.Explosions have occurred in particular in reactors 1 and 3 at the Fukushima, raising fears of an accident majeur.Un panic immediately swept the Tokyo Stock Exchange, sparing no sector. The Nikkei index plummeted by 10.55%. The Topix, which is composed of companies more oriented towards the domestic market that the Nikkei, consisting mainly of multinational companies, for its part, plunged 9.47%.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro appears to lower: about 11:00 am in Paris, the euro bought 1.3859 dollars against 1.3985 late Monday.
In this context, macroeconomic statistics should be further sidelined. Unemployment figures for the fourth quarter are expected and the United States and the import prices for February and the activity in the New York area in March.However, investors remain particularly attentive to the meeting after the close of Wall Street, the U.S. central bank (Fed). The latter should indeed take stock of its monetary policy in a climate of significant improvement in the U.S. economy tempered by concerns about international news. Long anticipated, the FOMC meeting held four days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday. The Fed's decision, however, should not be so affected by this tragedy whose negative effects on the U.S. economy may be only "weak", according to Ian Shepherdson, economist at the Institute HFE.The attention of the leaders of the Fed should be upheld by the situation in the Arab world, particularly in Libya.
The side of values, the high technology sector should undergo the full brunt of the devastating effects of the disaster in Japan. These groups may indeed soon be deprived of electronic components from Japan following the closure of many factories in the islands.
The energy sector related to nuclear power should also be further battered as the crisis in Japan could jeopardize the global development programs of this energy faxless cash advance. General Electric, which supplied the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear Japan Fukushima 1, the victim of several explosions, would still suffer the wrath of the market.Titles such as Constellation Energy, Duke Energy or Pacific Gas & Electric could also be affected.
Other sectors are also found in the front line, like luxury with titles like Tiffany.
Yesterday evening, Manulife Financial has confirmed that the amount of refunds related to the earthquake of 11 March in Japan should not exceed 150 million Canadian dollars after taxes and should not impact the company's annual results significantly.
Always on the side of values, the U.S. electronic stock market Nasdaq is preparing to launch a hostile bid to buy back its rival NYSE Euronext, promised to Deutsche Börse, said Monday the Wall Street Journal and CNBC financial channel.An offer from Nasdaq certainly provoke the intervention of competition authorities, while an alliance with NYSE Euronext would create a very dominant issue in the U.S. market, noted Wall Street Journal.
After the close on Wall Street last night, E * Trade Financial has announced the appointment of Peter Knitzer, former president of Citibank North America, as Vice-President and President of E * TRADE Bank following the departure Retirement of Robert V. Burton.
Also note, Apple announced it had sold nearly one million digital tablets iPad 2 during the first weekend of marketing in the United States, a symbolic milestone that the first version of the iPad was put in 28 days to reach , analysts said.
The computer group Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced an increase of 50% to $ 0.12 in its quarterly dividend from MayIn addition, the company will develop a full range of services computing cloud (cloud), which will complement its offering of hardware, from servers to PCs. Starting this year, said CEO Leo Apotheker at a day presentation of its strategy, five months after taking office, HP intends to open an "app store" available online.
KBR won a contract for the supply of licenses, basic engineering and training for an aniline plant with a capacity of 360,000 tons per year, located in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, belonging to Inner Mongolia Chemical Industry Connell.
Texas Instruments (TI) said its manufacturing site to Miho about sixty kilometers north of Tokyo, had suffered substantial damage after the earthquake that hit Japan.Restarting production is scheduled from May.