i Develop Stocks Advisory

Asian Stocks Fall on U.S. Slowdown Asian stocks fell for a second day, with automakers and electronics manufacturers leading declines, after the U.S. economy slowed last quarter and the yen strengthened to almost a three-year high against the dollar. Toyota Motor Corp. dropped in Tokyo by the most in a week, while Samsung Electronics Co. slipped for the first time in three days in South Korea. Commonwealth Bank of Australia slumped in Sydney after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned of possible failures among smaller banks. ``You've got a slowdown in economic growth and then there's the credit storm,'' Justin Urquhart Stewart, who manages about $4 billion including Asian assets as director of 7 Investment Management in London, said today in Singapore. ``We're going to see a lot more pain before we get any gains.'' The MSCI Asia Pacific Index declined 1.4 percent to 147.22 as of 11:01 a.m. in Tokyo. The benchmark has advanced 2.6 percent this month, after slumping 16 percent in the previous three months on concerns that a U.S. housing slump was dragging the world's largest economy into a recession. Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average lost 2.5 percent to 13,573.36, set for a fifth monthly drop. The S&P/ASX 200 Index retreated 2.2 percent, on course for its fourth monthly decline, the longest losing streak since 1992. Indexes also declined elsewhere in the region. U.S. stocks fell yesterday after the Commerce Department said gross domestic product rose at a 0.6 percent annualized rate, lower than the median estimate of a 0.8 percent increase in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 0.9 percent, the biggest loss in a week.