Markets Are In The Red

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Markets are down early in Europe's trading session.

Britain's FTSE 100 is down 0.2%.

France's CAC 40 is down 0.4%.

Germany's DAX is down 0.6%.

Spain's IBEX is down 0.2%.

This follows a 231 point sell-off in the the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday.

This has been a challenging week thanks to disappointing economic data out of China.

"The much weaker-than-expected Jan-Feb activity data highlights the impossible task of pushing for reforms while maintaining stable growth in 2014," said Barclays' China economist Adam Steinberg. "The Jan-Feb data all missed expectations by a wide margin. We think this reflects the negative impact from the ongoing reforms - cutting overcapacity and controlling pollution, anti-graft and broadened austerity measures to curb public spending and grey income, regulating shadow bank lending and allowing credit defaults, and controlling local government debt."

Later today, we'll get a preliminary March reading of U.S. consumer confidence from the University of Michigan. Economists estimate this index ticked up to 82.0 from 81.6 in February.

<b>See Also:</b>

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