November 16, 2015•Update: November 16, 2015
by Andrew Jay Rosenbaum
ANKARA
Asian stocks plunged on Monday, and European stock futures indicated similar action after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
"The horrific events in Paris on Friday are likely to have a short, sharp effect in markets,” warned Evan Lucas, a market strategist with IG in a note published early Monday.
Investors fled stock markets, seeking safe-haven investments in gold, up about one percent, and in the Japanese yen, which rose 0.1 percent to about 122 against the dollar.
Futures on Turkey’s Istanbul stock exchange were down about 0.66 percent on Monday morning.
Japan’s Nikkei index lost about one percent on Monday, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.7 percent.
South Korea’s Kospi was down about one percent; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 1.7 percent; and the Shanghai Composite lost 1.6 percent. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.6 percent.
Europe is not expected to fare better, as futures on major country indexes indicated a sharply lower open.
Germany's DAX futures dropped two percent, and France's CAC Index futures plunged about 4 percent. Futures on the FTSE 100 Index futures lost two percent.
The rout is expected to continue in the U.S., as Dow index futures were down almost 150 points on Monday morning. S&P futures lost about 28 percent.
Lucas, however, claimed that the effect on the world’s markets would be confined to the short term, adding: “In the long-term, however, real effects are more likely to influence political risk than the markets themselves."
