World Stocks Fall, Yen Up With Safety Sought

World stocks slid on Thursday, pushing the low-yielding yen and safer government bonds higher as investors grew increasingly disappointed over a compromise on a $789 billion U.S. fiscal stimulus plan.

U.S. congressional negotiators reached a deal on Wednesday over the plan on emergency spending and tax cuts, aimed at reversing a deep recession. The price tag was trimmed from $838 billion.

Investors also gave a thumbs down to another $2 trillion rescue package for banks from U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, announced earlier this week, saying it lacked specifics.

Economic data also soured the investor mood. Japanese wholesale prices fell for the first time in five years, fanning concerns the economy was on track for the second bout of deflation in a decade. Australia's jobless rate hit a two-year high.

"(Governments are using) historically strong medicines to try to revive a patient that is looking very weak at the moment and so far almost everything that has been used has failed to work," said Henk Potts, equity strategist at Barclays Stockbrokers. MSCI world equity index fell 0.9 percent while the FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading European shares fell 1.8 percent, led by banking and energy shares. Emerging stocks dropped more than 1 percent.

U.S. crude oil rose 0.4 percent.

Inflows into safer government bonds pushed yields down across the board. Two-year euro zone government bond futures hit 1.326 percent, its lowest since the euro's launch in 1999.

The March bund futures rose 40 ticks.

The yen rose 0.5 percent to 90.02 per dollar while the dollar rose a quarter of a percent against a basket of major currencies.

"We remain in an environment in which dismal U.S. economic news tend to be dollar supportive, to the extent that it brings renewed market jitters over the state of the global economy, boosts so-called risk aversion trades and favours flight to quality flows in the U.S. dollar and the yen," Brown Brothers Harriman said in a note to clients.