Stocks News

Oct 15 - A bleak September retail sales report ignited recession fears and sent stocks sharply lower around the globe.

Oct 15 -America's richest families are doing some belt-tightening of their own as financial anxieties run high even among the wealthy, say advisers and managers.

It was another bad day for stocks. The negative tone was set before the opening bell when the government reported a bigger-than-expected decline in September retail sales.

Federal authorities said Wednesday they have opened an investigation into the failure of Washington Mutual Inc., the nation's largest bank failure.

Wells Fargo & Co. on Wednesday said its quarterly earnings fell 25% as the company increased its credit reserves by $500 million to cover troubled loans amid the crunch in financial markets.

Federal antitrust regulators on Wednesday cleared Bank of America's $34.9 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co.

In the midst of historic volatility on Wall Street there is a continuing trend of blacks saving and investing less than whites, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Wall Street headed for a lower open Wednesday after JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported an 84 percent decline in its third-quarter profit in a sign of how the financial crisis is slamming the economy.

JPMorgan, which bought the assets of failed bank Washington Mutual Inc. late last month as a result of the mortgage bust, said that the profit drop reflected losses on bad mortgage investments, leveraged loans and home loans.

Still, the results beat expectations. The company earned $527 million, or 11 cents per share, compared with $3.4 billion, or 97 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a loss of 21 cents per share.

Hungary's currency has crumbled. Stocks have plunged in Poland. Real estate prices have eroded by 40 percent in Estonia.

Ukraine's central bank is trying to avert a large-scale panic among bank depositors, who have made large-scale savings withdrawals in the past two weeks.

In the Czech Republic, economic woes may delay the government's plans to privatize the national airline and switch to the euro. And Romanian 'nouveau riche' tycoons complain they're hemorrhaging cash as markets yo-yo.

Shares in the three UK banks being bailed out by the Government rose amid reports of pressure for the 37 billion plan to be reworked.