Indiana Grain Company, LLC

Posted: 07/18/10

By: tomgrisafi

We at Indiana Grain were tuned in and trading Sunday evening and looking ahead to Asian stock markets as they fell for Monday's session on weak U.S. consumer confidence and corporate results that were less than stellar.

As we all recall, Wall Street similarly fell apart on Friday, with all major U.S. indexes losing better than 2% after second-quarter results from the likes of Citigroup and Bank of America Corp sparked a massive selloff.

A survey from the University of Michigan and Reuters only worsened matters by indicating, as the AP notes, that "consumers in the world's biggest economy are becoming more pessimistic."

This is anything but good news for Asian economies "whose exporters rely on America as a key market."

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index shed 194.42 points to 20,060.80 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.4 percent to 4,362.80.

Seoul's Kospi fell 0.3 percent to 1,733.18.

On Friday, the Dow fell 261 points to 10,097.90 and the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 31.60 to 1,064.88.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 70.03 to 2,179.05.