point, we don t have any confirmation about any of these other stories. andrew? absolutely. okay, nina. there is one other big story in asia that people are focusing on this thursday. it s clear the balance of economic power in the region is shifting ever further away from japan. japan s economy shrank by 0.9% quart ir-on-quarter in the first three months of this year. that s the second quarterly contraction in a row. the gdp is down by 3.7% and the march 13th disaster is only partially to blame. we have the full details just ahead. meanwhile, the nikkei has taking a bit of a hit from that economic data this trading day, given e contraction is almost twice what analysts had been forecasting. let s take a look at the broad numbers across this region. starting in japan, the nikkei down by about 0.5%, the hong kong index adding 0.66% to the
trading yesterday but as i was just saying, slipping back a tad. it s below $1428 at the moment. andrew? it was all about the high oil prize of 24 hours ago or so which hurt markets in the u.s. it was a pretty weak start to the week, based on high energy prices, also a lagging tech sector but the news of greece s credit rating downgrade doing nothing to help sentiment on the street. here s how the numbers settle. the dow dropping 0.66%, the nasdaq dropping 1.4. semikon duconductor makers were downgraded. what can we expect today? it looks like a higher open when trading begins later this day. this is where the market currently stands. you re looking at futures. the dupe by 0.3% no doubt helped by the weaker oil prices. staying on wall street.
that in turn, as you can imagine, saw stocks sink. the dow jones industrial average dropped by about 0.66% and the nasdaq fell by almost 1.5%. the industry leader intel was downgraded. the s&p 500 closing 0.8% lower as well. the markets ending in the red on the other side of the atlantic. andrew? let s go to libya as the government fights back, the rebels are still refusing to back down. nic robertson shows us what the situation is like there as he literally dodges live gunfire. reporter: that s the sound of heavy machine gunfire, just ducking for cover. we re okay behind this wall. that s the what we could hear going on on the outskirts of
wall street. as that number goes down to more than 150,000, which seems to be the consensus, there s less prospect of u.s. interest rates being moved up soon and perhaps there s pressure on the euro. there is a lot of worry out here behind all of this. we re still worrying about banks. .only credit rights issue a couple of days ago is still being talked about in the markets because there s a big worry about european banks having to raise capital. here we are up by about 0.66% for the xetra dax, paris cac current, up by nearly 1% right now. let s have a look at the currency markets. we re looking at really a lot of weakness on the part of the euro. 127.83. it has been significantly lower than this. well down below 1.28. all way down to a 15-month low against the dollar.
spirit of economic allegiance and talks in washington. well, markets in europe stock markets anyway are fighting back a little bit on tuesday. that does seem to be some kind of resolution in the wind at least according to rumor in the escalating debt crisis in greece. one more downgrade from standard & poors and greece would become the worst rated country on the continent. more on that but let s have a look at the numbers. the numbers are up by actually more than 0. %, between 0.66% and 1%. in the case of all of them, some punishing selling off yesterday. a quick look at currencies. again, that rumor that there may be some kind of deal for greece is helping the euro, 143.66, the cable, 1.6380 nearly and the