Overnight

Thursday was a down day for Wall Street with the Dow off nearly 200 points. Asian shares for the most part played follow the leader Friday in early trade with the Nikkei down 1.5% on poor data about consumers. Though the index is off 1.7% for the month, it's set to finish the quarter nearly 6% higher. Some Bank of Japan board members doubted whether the central bank's overhaul of its massive stimulus programme, announced last week would enhance flexibility of monetary policy, a summary of opinions at the central bank's September rate review showed on Friday.

The Nikkei was at 16447.78., minus 245.93 points, the Hang Seng faded too, 1.25%, lower by nearly 298 points and the ASX 200 retreated 0.86% while the Shamghai Composite index was up slightly, o.19%. Part of the Asian downturn stemmed from before the market opened, Japanese officials released the core consumer index. It fell 0.5 percent on-year, slightly more than the 0.4 percent forecast by a Reuters poll of economists.  The mess called Deutsche Bank didn't either as concerns about the bank's stability had earlier rattled U.S. Markets.

In the currency markets, the yen traded at 101.00 against the dollar, up from its previous level of 101.50 a day earlier. Exports again were bothered by the stronger yen, sinking lower with Toyota off 2.53%, Nissan down 2.36% and Sony dropping 1.48%. The Australian dollar also weakened to 0.76 level. Gold suffered weakness owing to fallout from the Deutsch Bank news spilling over into the currencies market and pushing up the dollar against the euro. Gold, however, moved up a bit in Friday trading at $1323.20 an ounce. Perhaps the surprise of the day was in the oil market with WTI
Up 2.00% at $48 a barrel. The WSJ reported that Saudi agreed to the cut, possible 500,000 barrels a day, after facing the economic percussions of steady low oil prices.