In This Article:
* World stocks flat after big falls; Wall Street set for bounce
* Oil bounces modestly after big slide, but market still shaky
* European shares and bonds firm; focus on Italy and European Commission
* Graphic: World FX rates in 2018 http://tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh (Updates throughout, changes dateline, byline, adds charts)
By Sujata Rao
LONDON, Nov 21 (Reuters) - World stocks attempted to steady on Wednesday following a bruising Wall Street session that wiped $1 trillion off the value of leading U.S. tech shares, while oil prices staged a modest rebound after slumping to one-year lows.
U.S. shares were set to open sharply firmer, futures indicated , after two days of losses that wiped out the S&P500's gains for the year and left the tech-heavy Nasdaq index teetering on the brink of falling into the red.
Losses have been concentrated in the technology sector, as investors lightened holdings of FAANG shares -- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google -- the group that had propelled the Wall Street's decade-long bull market.
The falls saw the Nasdaq index touch seven-month lows and energy shares too had dropped in line with a 6 percent oil price slump S&P 500 .
That fed through to Asia on Wednesday, taking MSCI's index of ex-Japan Asia-Pacific shares almost half a percent lower, but it clawed back some of those falls to trade flat by 0900 GMT. MSCI's all-country benchmark was flat too, attempting to snap two days of falls.
That, alongside a 1.5 percent bounce in Brent crude futures and some optimism over Italy's budget stance, helped European equities open 0.4 percent higher, with a tech index up half a percent.
David Vickers, senior portfolio manager at Russell Investments, noted however that gloom has tended to deepen as the Wall Street session progresses and more company earnings emerge.
"High-flying momentum stocks have come off in a fairly spectacular fashion. At one point Apple and Amazon accounted for 40 percent of U.S. equity gains and people were just recycling money into the winners," Vickers said.
"That's come off the boil and set the cat among the pigeons... We've seen a lot of reflexivity, when selling begets selling, the market starts to turn over, people take profits, it leads to another leg down and so on."
Markets also appear to be preparing for a loss of momentum in global economic growth as China takes a hit from Washington's trade tariffs and the United States comes off the sugar-high of President Donald Trump's tax cuts.
Vickers said that after 20 percent-plus earnings growth at U.S. companies, some investors were disappointed with signs this would slow to single digits as the stimulus effect wore off.