Stocks decline in Tokyo and Hong Kong

TOKYO, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Stock prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange ended slightly lower Wednesday in light range-bound trading as players were reluctant to take active positions amid concerns over the cloudy global economic outlook following the retaliatory strikes in Afghanistan.

Stocks also declined in Hong Kong, South Korea and Sydney, Australia. Markets in Taiwan were closed for a national holiday. Trading was to resume Thursday with the Weighted Index hovering around 3,618.93.

Japan's blue-chip Nikkei Average of 225 selective issues, which lost 194.10 points Tuesday, slipped another 46.89 points, or 0.47 percent, to 9,964.88. It was the first time in four sessions the key index closed below the psychologically important 10,000 level.

Analysts noted the Nikkei traded within a range of less than 100 points all day.

The broader Topix index lost 11.83 points, or 1.13 percent, to 1031.17. The larger percentage drop in the Topix compared to the Nikkei was mostly due to continued selling in large-cap major bank stocks.

Declines overwhelmed advances 900 to 487, while another 91 stocks settled unchanged.

Volume improved to an estimated 598.57 million shares from 574.26 million shares changing hands Tuesday. But, the level is still considered dull, as fewer investors are willing to take risks in light of uncertainties over the mid-term.

Analysts said stocks were led lower by weakness in banks and technology stocks amid concerns over earnings, with the market narrowly traded due to uncertainty over the U.S.-led air strikes on Afghanistan.

In addition, slow progress in the cleanup of Japanese banks' non-performing loans affected overall market sentiment, traders said.

Investors are concerned over deteriorating earnings due to the burden of banks' bad loans write-offs, and stock valuation losses. Selling in banks accelerated after Hakuo Yanagisawa, minister in charge of financial affairs, said the government will exercise its voting rights if banks are unable to pay a dividend for its preferred share holdings.

In trading, among some of the banks, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, the most actively traded issue, fell 6.9 percent. UFJ Holdings lost 8.7 percent, Mizuho Holdings dropped 7.3 percent and Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group fell 6.8 percent.

Meanwhile, Bridgestone rose 3.9 percent, game software maker Square jumped 9.5 percent, Fast Retailing, an operator of casual clothing shops, jumped 6.8 percent and Bosch Automotive Systems surged 12.2 percent.

Elsewhere in Asia, prices ended lower in cautious trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The blue-chip Hang Seng Index lost 60.69 points, or 0.59 percent, to 10,298.24, pressured by renewed concerns over Hong Kong's economic outlook.

Hong Kong's chief executive Tung Chee-hwa said in his annual policy address that the territory's fragile economy would suffer further due to the effects of attacks in the United States last month.

In trading, HSBC, Europe's largest bank, lost 2.4 percent, Bank of East Asia dropped 3.7 percent and CNOOC, the nation's largest offshore oil producer, lost 1.3 percent.

Prices also ended slightly lower on the South Korean Stock Exchange. The Kospi Composite Index slipped 4.15 points, or 0.80 percent, to 503.46.

Korean Air Lines lost 1.9 percent after the airline announced it expected to sell more than 10 airplanes as it planned to cut services in line with falling demand after the U.S. air attacks.

Chipmakers also fell. Samsung Electronics lost 1.7 percent and Hynix Semiconductor sank 6.8 percent.

Elsewhere around the region, prices ended slightly lower on the Australian Stock Exchange, pressured by weakness in telecom issues. The blue-chip All Ordinaries eased 14.00 points, or 0.45 percent, to 3,073.70, pressured by a 2.3 percent decline in Telstra and a 3.2 percent decline in Cable & Optus.

Survey: CFOs say Sept. 11 will reduce earnings

NEW YORK, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A special survey looking to gauge the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on corporate America found that 57 percent of chief financial officers expect the events to reduce their company's earnings in the coming year.

The survey, conducted by Financial Executives International and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, interviewed CFOs of U.S. companies through an anonymous e-mail survey in the first week of October. Of those, 669 CFOs responded.

About 6 percent of those polled said they expect the events to have a positive impact on their company's earnings this year, 25 percent see no direct earnings impact, while the remaining 12 percent were unsure.

Although a majority of companies are predicting an earnings crunch in the near future, they also expect to bounce back relatively quick next year.

CFOs on average are looking for earnings growth of 8.4 percent during the next 12 months. These numbers are down from earnings predictions of 10 percent made in June 2001.

On average the survey showed CFOs project that the U.S. gross domestic product will shrink by 0.25 percentage points during the third quarter and 0.34 percentage points during the fourth quarter.

Larger firms, or those with sales of at least $1 billion, were slightly less optimistic, predicting that the GDP would shrink by 0.38 percentage point in the third quarter and by 0.73 percentage point in the fourth quarter.

A couple of weeks after the attacks, the Commerce Department issued revisions to the second quarter GDP data, raising the final GDP growth figure to 0.3 percent from an initial 0.2 percent, confounding market analysts who had widely expected a revision downward to 0.1 percent growth.

Retail sales improve in September

HOUSTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- TeleCheck Services Inc. said American consumers, heeding the advice of government leaders encouraging continued spending and business as usual, helped boost same-store retail sales 0.9 percent during September.

"Retailing came to a virtual stand-still during the week of Sept.11 as millions of Americans were glued to their TV set tracking the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks. However, we also noticed that sales began to trend upward during the last half of the month, a sign of our economy's ability to rebound from crisis as it has done historically," said William Ford, TeleCheck's senior economic adviser.

"The increase in last month's same-store sales -- however modest -- might reflect not only the prolonged stimulus applied by the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts and increased government spending, but also boosts in spending on patriotic and precautionary purchases, as Americans unite in the wake of this tragedy," Ford said.

TeleCheck said sales rose 2.9 percent in the Southeast region, rose 2.7 percent in the Southwest, grew 2.2 percent in the Midwest, improved 1.0 percent in the West and increased 0.8 percent in the Mid-Atlantic region of the country.

Sales sank 3.6 percent in the Northeast region of the country, led lower by 7.1 percent decline in New York State and a 14.1 percent decline in shopping in New York City.

The TeleCheck Retail Index is based on a year-over-year, same-store comparison of the dollar volume of checks written by consumers at more than 27,000 of TeleCheck's 272,000 subscribing locations. Checks account for about one-third of retail spending and remain second only to cash as the most popular method of payment.

TeleCheck is a subsidiary of Denver-based First Data Corp.