Scotland's threat to exit from the United Kingdom pushed the British pound to a 10-month low against the US dollar and sparked weakness in major stock markets.
A poll out over the weekend for the first time put the vote for independence ahead of the vote for Scotland to stay part of the UK.
Scottish companies with operations in England fell sharply - Royal Bank of Scotland was down 1.3 per cent.
Overall, London's FTSE 100 lost 0.3 per cent to 6,834; the Eurostoxx 600 lost 0.4 per cent to 346.
Wall Street also slipped off its record high overnight, as a decline in oil prices weighed on major energy stocks.
The Dow Jones retreated 0.2 per cent to 17,111, and the S&P 500 lost 0.3 per cent from its record high to close at 2,002.
Overnight, the Brent crude price fell below $US100 a barrel for the first time since July 2013, on concerns about surplus supply.
That caused Shell to drop 2.3 per cent, while Exxon Mobil lost 1.5 per cent.
News that Chinese online retailing giant Alibaba plans to raise $US21 billion in an initial public offering on the US market failed to offset the energy downturn.
However, Yahoo stocks rose almost 6 per cent on the news, as it owns a fifth of Alibaba.
In Australia, the local share market was set for a flat start to trade; at 7:25am (AEST) the ASX SPI 200 futures index was unchanged at 5,579.
The Australian dollar was down sharply, hurt by a rise in the greenback, and buying 92.74 US cents.
On commodity markets, spot gold was also down sharply at $US1,255.22 an ounce.
The iron ore price stayed at a five-year low, with the Chinese benchmark price stuck at $US83.60 a tonne while traders were off work for a public holiday.
Other key oil prices fell as well overnight: West Texas crude oil closed down at $US92.59; and, in Singapore, the Tapis crude closed at $US102.49 a barrel.
Topics: stockmarket, currency, futures, markets, scotland, united-kingdom, european-union, united-states, australia First posted September 09, 2014 09:05:06View the original article here
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar