Investors, who took the North Korea report from Japan in their stride earlier in the day, lost their appetite for risk after Trump's comments to reporters during his vacation at his golf club in New Jersey. Tensions have been rising in the Korean Peninsula, and reached a new level with President Trump's "threat" of "fire and fury" against North Korea if they should proceed with a missile strike against Guam, a USA territory located in the Pacific. The Dow slid 0.2 per cent to 22,085.34.
The market indexes wavered between small gains and losses for much of the morning, then veered lower by afternoon.
Among the actives, British American Tobacco plummeted 3.37 percent, while Genting Malaysia dropped 1.17 percent, IOI Corporation shed 0.44 percent, Astro Malaysia Holdings added 0.38 percent, Maybank collected 0.20 percent, Petronas Chemicals lost 0.14 percent, Telekom Malaysia fell 0.16 percent and Sime Darby, CIMB Group, Public Bank and Tenaga Nasional all were unchanged.
Shares of Dow component Walt Disney were down 4.44 percent as investors doubted whether it can succeed with its plan to launch its own streaming services rather than rely on Netflix Inc to reach online viewers.
Unsurprisingly, Acacia Mining led the movers on London's second-tier index, bucking the miner trend which saw most of its competitors fall, thanks to rising silver and gold prices on the back of the news out of Asia.
FaceApp 'Racist' Filter Shows Users As Black, Asian, Caucasian And Indian
People online have already started to criticize the app for what is essentially a blatant case of digital blackface . In 2016, Snapchat released a Bob Marley selfie mask filter to mark the 4/20 April holiday.
Nine of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower, with the consumer discretionary index's 10.2 percent fall leading the decliners.
Disappointing earnings also helped pull the market lower Wednesday. The dollar was down 1.2 percent at 0.9627 Swiss francs, while an ounce of gold was 1 percent higher at $1,275.
Wall Street's fear index jumped nearly 1.5 points after President Donald Trump's stern warning North Korea would be smart to stop threatening the United States.
At 12:28 p.m. ET (1628 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 52.87 points, or 0.24 percent, at 22,032.47, the S&P 500 was down 2.8 points, or 0.11 percent, at 2,472.12. Travel-review website operator TripAdvisor was down 7.35 percent. Copper fell 2 cents to $2.93 a pound.
Mumbai: Stock market closed down for the third session on Wednesday as the Sensex plunged by over 216 points to end below the 32,000-mark.
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