NEW YORK - Wall Street opened down Tuesday after a gloomy session on overseas markets and with investors nervous about upcoming US data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.17 points (0.21 percent) to 10,463.48 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dipped 2.25 points (0.11 percent) to 1,990.27 in the first trades.
European markets picked up on the gloom seen on Asian bourses Tuesday after a slew of disappointing data dominated by worse-than-expected unemployment and household spending numbers in Japan.
"Weakness in Asian markets, specifically Japan, is weighing on the futures at the open," said Marc Pado, a market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, just before the start of trading.
US investors were in turn biting their nails ahead of the release later Tuesday of the consumer confidence index for March, final fourth-quarter gross domestic product data Wednesday and then an all-important employment report on Friday.
Pado said that an expected dip in the consumer confidence reading, to 103 from 104 in February, was weighing on early sentiment.
03/29/2005 14:47 GMT