Global stocks mostly fell on Thursday after Wall Street halted its big rally following disappointing corporate earnings reports and warnings that the market had risen too much, too fast.
Germany's DAX fell 0.3% to 16,676.00 and in Paris, the CAC40 fell 0.3% to 7,559.33. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.1% to 7,707.00.
The S&P 500 future rose 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average future rose 0.4%.
In Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index fell 1.6% to 33,140.47, and Japanese automaker Toyota led losses on the benchmark index, falling 4%. The company said Wednesday that it is recall of 1 million vehicles about a defect that could cause the airbags to fail to deploy, increasing the risk of injury.
This came on top of news that Toyota's small car subsidiary Daihatsu had suspended shipments of all its vehicles in Japan and abroad after an investigation found inadequate safety testing on 64 models, including some made for Toyota, Mazda and Subaru. Japanese Transportation Ministry officials raided Daihatsu's offices on Thursday.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.5% to 7,504.10. South Korea's Kospi lost 0.6% to 2,600.02. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added less than 0.1% to 16,621.00 and the Shanghai Composite gained 0.6% to 2,918.71.
India's Sensex and Bangkok's SET gained 0.3%.
Wednesday's losses on Wall Street were widespread, with about 95% of S&P 500 companies falling.
The S&P 500 fell 1.5% to 4,698.35, its worst loss since a monster rally began shortly before Halloween. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.3% to 37,082.00 from its all-time high, while the Nasdaq composite sank 1.5% to 14,777.94.
FedEx fell 12.1%, one of the market's biggest losses after reporting weaker revenue and earnings for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also now expects its revenue for the full fiscal year to fall from year-earlier levels, rather than remaining broadly flat, due to pressures on demand.
Still, a pair of reports showed that the U.S. economy could be in stronger overall shape than expected. Both consumer confidence in December and sales of previously occupied homes in November it improved more than economists expected.
Encouraging signs that inflation is cooling globally also continue to accumulate. In the UK, inflation in November unexpectedly slowed down to 3.9% from the 4.6% rate in October, reaching its lowest level since 2021.
The easing of price increases is raising hopes that central banks around the world could abandon their campaigns to sharply raise interest rates in 2024, which were aimed at controlling inflation. For the Federal Reserve in particular, the general expectation is that its main interest rate will fall by at least 1.50 percentage points in 2024 from its current range of 5.25% to 5.50%, which is its highest level in more of two decades.
Treasury yields have been falling since late October on such hopes, and fell again following the UK inflation report.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.86% from 3.85% late Wednesday.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil rose 22 cents to $74.44 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 26 cents to $79.96 a barrel.
The US dollar fell to 143.25 Japanese yen from 143.56 yen. The euro fell to $1.0938 from $1.0943 late Wednesday.
