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(Reuters) -A massive fire at the import cargo complex of Dhaka airport has caused extensive damage to goods and materials belonging to major garment exporters, with losses and impacts on trade likely to run into millions of dollars, industry leaders said on Sunday. The blaze broke out on Saturday afternoon in the import section of the airport’s cargo village, forcing a temporary suspension of flights. Smoke continued to rise from the charred remains of the facility on Sunday as firefighters and airport officials assessed the damage. The fire gutted storage areas used for imported raw materials, ready-to-export apparel, and product samples — all essential to Bangladesh’s $47 billion garment industry. "This incident has caused serious damage to the country’s export trade, especially the garment sector,” said Inamul Haq Khan, senior vice-president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).  “High-value goods and urgent air shipments have been destroyed — including garments prepared for shipment, raw materials for production, and, most importantly, product samples.” He warned that the loss of samples could jeopardise future business. “These samples are essential for securing new buyers and expanding orders. Losing them means our members may miss out on future opportunities,” he added. ESSENTIAL SAMPLES BURNED IN FIRE BGMEA has begun gathering information from affected exporters to determine the extent of the losses. “We have asked all members to submit detailed lists of damaged goods, and an online portal has been launched to speed up data collection,” Khan added. The airport cargo village is one of Bangladesh’s busiest logistics hubs, handling more than 600 metric tons of dry cargo daily — a figure that doubles during the October to December peak season. “Every day, around 200 to 250 factories send their products by air,” Khan said. “Given that scale, the financial impact is significant.” The cause of the blaze has not yet been determined, and an investigation is underway. The incident marks the third major fire reported in Bangladesh this week. A fire on Tuesday at a garment factory and an adjacent chemical warehouse in Dhaka killed at least 16 people and injured others. On Thursday, another burned down a seven-storey garment factory building in an export processing zone in Chittagong. Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel after China. The sector, which supplies major global retailers such as Walmart, H&M, and Gap, employs about 4 million workers and generates around $40 billion a year — more than a tenth of the country’s GDP. The fire, which struck during the peak export season, is expected to delay shipments and pose additional challenges in meeting international delivery deadlines. (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Louise Heavens)

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By Lewis Krauskopf NEW YORK (Reuters) -Earnings reports next week, including from Tesla and Netflix, will provide a deeper look at U.S. corporate profits while delayed U.S. inflation data will mark another test of the stock market, which has become shakier even as it remains around record highs. The fourth year of the S&P 500's bull run kicked off this week with some significant gyrations after a long period of market calm. Revived U.S.-China trade tensions and credit concerns at regional U.S. banks drove the anxiety. The CBOE market volatility index, known as Wall Street's "fear gauge", has surged in recent days and hit its highest level in nearly six months on Friday. "The market is becoming more volatile, but it's also coming off of a very non-volatile period where we didn't have a lot of risk catalysts bubbling to the top," said Michael Reynolds, vice president of investment strategy at Glenmede. "Once you have valuations hit sort of full levels, as we're seeing now almost across the board, you have to be on the lookout for incremental risk catalysts." The spark for the latest volatility was a surprise resurgence in U.S.-China trade tensions. Stocks slumped late last week after the U.S. threatened to significantly hike tariffs by November 1 over China's rare-earth export controls. The U.S.-China trade issue will be key for markets in the coming week, said Doug Beath, global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed on Friday that he would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in two weeks in South Korea. Sharp swings in global financial shares to end the week also kept investors on edge as they weighed the extent of credit concerns emerging from regional U.S. banks. Major stock indexes posted weekly gains and are on pace for strong years. The benchmark S&P 500 is up 13.3% year-to-date and 1.3% below its record high. But there are signs the market is weakening under the surface. The percentage of S&P 500 stocks in some form of an uptrend declined from 77% in early July to 57% as of Tuesday while the number of stocks in a downtrend increased from 23% to 44% over that time, according to Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial.  That "narrowing gap highlights emerging cracks in the market’s foundation," Turnquist said in written commentary. Similarly, Kevin Gordon, senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab, said he will be watching how broadly based the market's gains are going forward. "If you have a fewer number of companies that are actually moving higher, but the indexes do move higher because of the megacaps, that's a really important divergence," Gordon said. Attention will be on third-quarter earnings after major banks started the reporting season on a strong note. Aside from streaming giant Netflix and electric vehicle maker Tesla, other companies due to report in the coming week include consumer companies Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, aerospace and defense giant RTX and tech stalwart IBM. The corporate results and executive comments will offer insight into the economy as the U.S. government shutdown has stopped economic data releases since October 1, including monthly employment data. Corporate "reports and what companies say is really our best chance at assessing what the broader economic health is," Gordon said. The government has said it will release the U.S. consumer price index for September on Friday, nine days late, saying the CPI data allows the Social Security Administration to meet deadlines for timely payment of benefits. The CPI report, which is a closely watched inflation gauge, will be released days before the Federal Reserve's next monetary policy meeting on October 28-29. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point again, after weakening jobs data prompted the Fed to lower rates last month for the first time this year. "We'd really have to see something out of left field in terms of notable inflation pressures to knock the Fed off of a rate cut path at the October meeting," Glenmede's Reynolds said. (Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)

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