- Oil Next Week: What Traders Will Be Watching

- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Court Rejects 'Clawbacks' for Alleged Stanford Victims
- Tax Credit Sparking First-Time Home Sales: Realtors
- Investors Cut Back US Stocks for Bigger Growth Abroad
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- White House Plans to Freeze Spending to Cut Deficit
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- Oil Next Week: What Traders Will Be Watching
- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
- Fed Reform? Not So Fast.
MOST SHARED
- Seeking Innovation in Health Care
- Driving Health Care Innovation
- Downturn is Prime Time for Airport Infrastructure Projects
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Next Week’s Top IPO
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- Gold Rises, Nears Record High as Dollar Drops
- Web Extra: Where Will The Next Bull Come From?
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
Japan's Nikkei 225 Average and oil prices hit six-week lows Wednesday as investors pulled funds out of bets on the global economy's recovery and favored safe havens, such as the U.S. dollar and government bonds.
Comments that a second U.S. stimulus package may be necessary coupled with heavy U.S. job losses have taken the wind out of a rally in global stocks and commodities, tempering some of the optimism about how quickly growth will return. Data showed U.S. consumers defaulting on credit card bills and home loans at a record rate as unemployment grows.
The yen pushed higher as investors reversed positions in higher-yielding currencies, which tend to benefit from rising stocks and commodities. The low-yielding yen is often used as a cheap source of funds to buy higher-yielding currencies in carry trades. The dollar dipped 0.2 percent to 94.60 yen [JPY=
Loading...
()
]and touched a five-week low of 94.52 yen. The euro shed 0.3 percent to 131.50 yen [$$EURJPY
Loading...
()
] and struck a six-week low. Oil prices [US@CL.1
Loading...
()
] approached the $62 a barrel level and have shed more than $11 in a little more than a week. Gold was little changed at $923.35 an ounce.
Japanese core machinery orders surprisingly fell 3.0 percent from a month earlier in May, in government data released just before the Nikkei's open, adding to concerns that business investment may fall further as companies look to cut capital expenditure.
The Nikkei 225 Average [JP;N225
Loading...
()
] fell 2.4 percent to a six-week closing low, hurt by an unexpected slide in domestic machinery orders and as the yen rose to seven-week highs against the dollar on talk of more stimulus for the U.S. economy. Komatsu and other machinery makers dropped after Japan's core private-sector machinery orders fell 3.0 percent in May from the previous month, suggesting a recovery in capital spending may be delayed..
South Korea's KOSPI ended just 0.2 percent lower, trimming early losses from concerns over the global economy, helped by gains in carmakers and with technology heavyweights such as Samsung regaining ground.
Australian shares closed flat, clawing back from earlier losses as investors looked to buy some stocks at cheaper levels, including miner Rio Tinto and the top banks.
More From CNBC.com
Hong Kong shares tumbled 0.8 percent, set for a third straight losing session, as talk swirled of the need for a second round of stimulus spending in the United States, fueling investor doubts about the pace of economic recovery. China Construction Bank fell 0.4 percent. China Merchants Bank slipped 3.6 percent. China's sixth-largest lender is planning a rights share offer to raise about $3 billion before year-end, as it seeks to boost its capital after overpaying for a recent acquisition, investment banking sources told Reuters.
Singapore's Straits Times Index dropped 0.6 percent, also pulled lower by concerns over the U.S. economy.
China's Shanghai Composite Index pared back losses, but was still down 0.3 percent. Chinese bank stocks led the pullback as investors worried that China may backtrack on its easy monetary policies following a strong surge in new lending in the first half. The property sector was also weak.
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- For the chief of cable company Comcast, growth has been about making deals – generally very large deals.
- Some companies may start using insurance to shift carbon risk from their balance sheets to maybe... yours?
- The president and founder of Genesis Today wants to improve America’s health, and thinks Wal-Mart can help.
- Switzerland's privacy watchdog is taking legal action to force Google to make changes to its Street View service.
- A wealthy, distracted Texas driver crashed his million-dollar Bugatti Veyron sports car into a salt marsh, say police.













