Asian stocks close mixed Europe seesawing

European stocks opened higher Thursday but showed signs of tiring later in the morning amid the global turmoil as Asian markets closed mixed. As in Asia, concerns among the European investors centered over the Eurozone debt and the U.S. economy. European stock prices on major exchanges opened strong Thursday, but by late morning only London's FTSE and Germany's DAX were in the positive territory. In Asia, most exchanges couldn't fully recover from their Thursday opening hit and waved red at close, as investors heard nothing encouraging during the day. Thursday's performance, brought on largely by the mayhem the previous day on the New York markets and fears that France could be next on the rating downgrade block after the United States' downgrade to AA+ from AAA by Standard & Poor's, also put full stop to the Asian market's one-day rally Wednesday. Tokyo's Nikkei-225 index, the early forecaster of the Asian market mood, showed only enough strength to offset some of the 2.2 percent opening plunge to close 57 points down, or 0.6 percent, to 8,982 points. The yen's growing strength remained a concern as that would further hit Japan's exports. Kyodo News reported the government was set to revise downward its forecast for the world's third largest economy's growth this fiscal year to around 0.5 percent. The Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index mimicked the Nikkei, cutting its morning's 2 percent deficit to close 1 percent down to 19,595 points. But China's Shanghai Composite Index advanced 1.3 percent to end the day at 2,581 points. China's trade surplus in July soared to $31.5 billion, easing fears that the current climate could hurt the country's exports. Taiwan's Taiex slipped 0.2 percent to 7,719.09, while Australia's Ordinaries remained largely unchanged at 4,140.8. South Korea's Kospi was another exception, closing up 0.6 percent to 1,817 points after being down a hefty 4 percent. The country's central bank left the key seven-day repo rate unchanged at 3.25 percent, giving more consideration to the global conditions than rising inflation at home. Both of India's bourses closed lower, with the 30-stock Sensex shedding 71 points, or 0.42 percent, to 17,059 points and the broader Nifty yielding 23 points, or 0.44 percent, to 5,138 points. CNN reported U.S. stocks may rally Thursday, encouraged by a slightly improved forecast from Cisco Systems, whose shares rose sharply in after-hours trading. However, investors still remained concerned about a double-dip recession in the United States and the European debt crisis. "We have had volatile markets in the past that have headed in one direction, but this time around no one seems to know what is going to happen," Andrew Robinson of Saxo Capital Markets told the BBC. "On Tuesday, you had the Dow Jones up by 4 percent, if had you asked me then, I would have said it looks like we have bottomed out. But you wake up this morning to find that it is down by the same magnitude again." Copyright 2011 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI contenis expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.