Reply #2: Wall St set for flat open as disaster toll mounts

[ozymandius]

Wall Street futures were flat on Tuesday as investors awaited an update on consumer confidence and the mounting toll of the Asian tsunami disaster continued to drag down insurance shares.

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Bullish investors are still looking for signs of a widely-expected "Santa-Claus" rally - an upsurge in share prices in the days following Christmas. But those hopes were stymied on Monday, the first day of post-Christmas trading, as the growing humanitarian disaster in south east Asia took its toll on global markets.

Insurers remained in the spotlight on Tuesday, as reports trickled in about the extent of the damage. Although initial reports suggested that damage claims would be modest due to the lack of widespread insurance the the countries affected by the tsunami, the unprecedented scale of the disaster continued to delay concrete estimates of its financial toll.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1106&ncid=1106&e=1&u=/ft/20041228/bs_ft/d069672258d111d989a500000e2511c8