World Shares Mostly Lower Monday       01/24 05:06

   Shares were mostly lower in Europe and Asia on Monday after Wall Street 
logged its worst week since the pandemic began in 2020.

   BANGKOK (AP) -- Shares were mostly lower in Europe and Asia on Monday after 
Wall Street logged its worst week since the pandemic began in 2020.

   Shares fell in Paris, London and Frankfurt but rose in Tokyo. Shanghai was 
little changed.

   Investors have been growing increasingly worried about how aggressively the 
Federal Reserve, which holds a policy meeting this week, might act to cool 
rising inflation.

   Historically low interest rates, dubbed quantitative easing, or QE, have 
helped support the broader market as the economy absorbed a sharp hit from the 
pandemic in 2020 and then recovered over the last two years.

   "The FOMC (Fed) meeting dominates the macro calendar this week and is likely 
to keep risk sentiment on the hesitant side with an end to QE and imminent 
rates hikes likely to be announced," economists Nicholas Mapa and Robert 
Carnell of ING said in a commentary.

   Germany's DAX shed 1.1% to 15,431.03 while the CAC 40 in Paris gave up 1.4% 
to 6,971.19. In London, the FTSE 100 fell 0.7% to 7,447.03. The futures for the 
S&P 500 and the Dow industrials gained 0.3%.

   Some economists believe the Fed and other central banks need to move faster 
to tamp down surging prices by raising rates. U.S. consumer prices rose 7% in 
December compared to a year earlier, the biggest increase in nearly four 
decades.

   Rising costs are raising concerns that consumers will start to ease spending 
because of the persistent pressure on their wallets. At the same time, 
outbreaks of the omicron variant of the coronavirus are threatening to slow 
recoveries from the crisis.

   Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index edged 0.2% higher to 27,588.37.

   Shares in electronics and energy giant Toshiba Corp. fell 1.6% after the 
company said it was suspending production at a factory in southern Japan that 
makes semiconductors for vehicles and machinery after a strong earthquake hit 
the region.

   The Hang Seng in Hong Kong shed 1.2% to 24,656.46. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 
200 lost 0.5% to 7,139.50 and India's Sensex dropped 2.7% to 57,419.98.

   South Korea's Kospi dropped 1.5% to 2,792.00 on heavy selling of big 
technology companies like Samsung and LG Chemical. Thailand's SET lost 0.7%.

   The Shanghai Composite index gained less than 0.1%, to 3,524.11.

   On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 sank 1.9% to 4,397.94, falling 5.7% for the 
week in its worst weekly loss since March 2020.

   The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index dipped 2.7% to 13,768.92. It has 
fallen for four straight weeks and is now more than 10% below its most recent 
high, putting it in what Wall Street considers a market correction.

   The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.3% to 34,265.37.

   With investors expecting the Fed to begin raising rates as soon as its March 
policy meeting, costly shares in tech companies and other expensive growth 
stocks now look relatively less attractive.

   Treasury yields have fallen as investors turn toward safer investments. The 
yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 1.73% from 1.76% on Friday.

   The Fed's benchmark short-term interest rate is currently in a range of 0% 
to 0.25%. Investors now see a nearly 70% chance that the Fed will raise the 
rate by at least one percentage point by the end of the year, according to CME 
Group's Fed Watch tool.

   In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 21 cents to $85.35 per 
barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gave up 41 
cents to $85.14 per barrel on Friday.

   Brent crude, the basis for pricing international oils, added 26 cents to 
$88.15 per barrel.

   The U.S. dollar fell to 113.62 Japanese yen from 113.68 yen. The euro 
slipped to $1.1327 from $1.1346.