China Commodity Demand Fears Trigger Global Stock Sell Off

Stock markets tumbled on Monday amid renewed concerns over China’s stuttering economy.

Mining and commodity trading firms were the hardest hit by the rout that knocked 2.5% off the FTSE 100 and sent it back below 6,000 points at the close.

Glencore, Anglo American and BHP Billiton led the leaderboard of largest losers in London, followed by copper miner Antofagusta and the east-Asia focused bank Standard Chartered.

US industrial firms considered bellwethers for the global economy were also targeted by traders, triggering falls in New York of construction equipment maker Caterpillar, investment bank Goldman Sachs, sports clothing firm Nike, and Visa.

The Dow Jones was down by more than 1.5% by early afternoon trading in New York, following a slide in the German Dax that topped 2% following more revelations in the Volkswagen debacle.

Fears that China’s woes are about to deepen were heightened by Chinese government statistics showing profits in the nation’s industrial companies plunged 8.8% last month. All the major economic forecasters have scaled back their predictions for global growth in recent months and blamed the slowdown in China as the main reason.

via The Guardian

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza