Oil reached $142 a barrel, a record high, and world stock indexes declined as Wall Street braced for markets to open a day after a painful 300-point plunge in the Dow. American markets bounced around at the open and were up slightly by 10:00 a.m. Investors are hoping the Dow Jones industrial average will recover some of its losses from Thursday, when downgrades on banks and auto makers dragged the blue-chip index toward bear market territory — and its lowest close since September 2006.
Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index was down 1 percent on Friday and stocks in all major markets in the region dropped. Frankfurt’s DAX index lost 0.9 percent and the Paris CAC was down 0.9 percent in afternoon trading; London’s FTSE 100 was nearly unchanged. Asia’s major indexes fared worse. In Japan, the Nikkei share average was set for its worst first-half performance since 1995 after losing 2 percent in overnight trading.
Investors in Asia were seeking refuge in less risky assets like gold, whose price overnight rose to the highest in a month as stocks of even the largest brand names such as Honda Motor, Sony and Samsung Electronics tumbled. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong lost 1.8 percent and the Australian exchange in Sydney fell 1.3 percent. More
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