Asia Starts Week With Fall

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Asia stocks fall after rallying on Friday. China investors unnerved as severe winter storms affect energy supplies and cause transport chaos ahead of a major holiday.

ZHANG:
Asia stocks fell sharply on Monday after strong gains made late last week.

Japan's Nikkei tumbled 4 percent (13,088) after posting its biggest one day rally in six years on Friday.

A weak set of Japanese earnings increased fears that a slowing U.S. economy is affecting business.

The world's second-largest steel maker Nippon Steel said its pre-tax profit fell 0.7 percent in the nine months to December.

Despite recent strong growth in many Asian economies, most countries are still highly geared toward exporting products to the United States.

Ben Simpfendorfer is a strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland:


"Asia is still heavily leveraged to exports. It's also heavily leveraged to global financial markets and any global financial market turbulence will inevitably spill over into this region and that will have a negative impact on sentiment on consumption and on investment."

China shares were also hurt by the darkening outlook over the global economy.

But Chinese markets took an extra hit as heavy winter snows caused transport chaos and energy supply shortages ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday.

Investors are also concerned that rising inflation may spike further due to energy shortages.

Investors will be keeping a close eye this week on the outcome of a U.S. Federal Reserve meeting on interest rates. Some investors are already doubtful that last week's emergency rate cut was enough to boost a slagging U.S. economy.

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