Posted on 10/22/2007 1:28:09 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Market turmoil sends London stocks plummeting
London shares slide as investors react to a weaker US dollar and heavy overnight falls on Asian stock markets
Steve Hawkes
The value of Britain’s biggest companies plunged this morning with 114 points wiped from the FTSE 100 as investors reacted to growing signs of global market turmoil.
The US dollar hovered near a record low overnight and stock markets in Asia suffered their biggest falls for weeks as traders took their lead from the brutal sell-off on Wall Street on Friday.
In London, the FTSE 100 was down 114.5 points at 6413.5 after opening with every single company in negative territory.
Northern Rock, the beleaguered mortgage bank, fell 3.6 per cent while Kazakhmys and Vedanta Resources, two of the City’s biggest mining companies, fell by 6 per cent and 4.8 per cent respectively.
British Energy, the nuclear power group, plunged 10 per cent on yet another production setback.
David Buik, analyst at Cantor Index, the city spread-better said: “We’re basically playing catch up with what happened in New York on Friday.
“People got ahead of themselves thinking the credit crunch was over given what was a calmer week last week.”
In Asia overnight, the Nikkei 225 fell to a four-week low in Tokyo while the Hang Seng index dropped nearly 2.5 per cent at one stage in Hong Kong.
Exporters were hardest hit in the sell-off as the yen continued to climb against the US dollar.
Growing fears over the health of the US economy and the American housing market saw the dollar fall to 113.20 yen before recovering slightly.
The euro jumped to a record high of about $1.4350. Sterling was trading at $2.0522.
On Friday, US stocks had suffered their biggest one-day fall for two months, the 20th anniversary of the Black Monday stock market turmoil, as nervous traders reacted to a spate of poor corporate results and renewed concerns about the credit crunch.
Caterpillar, the US construction equipment group, fuelled the sell-off by commenting that several of the key US industries it supplies were effectively in recession.
Despite the gloom, Mr Buik insisted he believed London shares would rally later today.
He said: “Miners, banks and retailers were suffer the brunt of the falls but at these levels the FTSE still offers value.”
Ping!
Should make for interesting Monday markets in the U.S.
The last time there was a big sell-off in Asia and London, the US market went way up by the end of the day. So I’m not sure what to expect.
I hadn’t realized that. Very interesting. Thanks.
Good observation. World markets are reacting to Friday’s sell off in the US.
Unfortunately we're not looking so great in that regard these days either.
It was really something HERE today.
The Fed caused the loose credit problem in the first place and now they're trying to fix it by loosening credit ?
The credit crunch represents a loss of confidence.
When you're running a confidence game, nothing is more important than confidence.
BUMP
What I’ve learned in the last few days is that the term “plummeting” is an ill-defined term.
Last week they compared the “plummeting” stock market of Black Monday to Friday’s “plummeting” market...one problem the difference in percentage of loss was 22% to about 2.6%.
Seems to me that the MSM are trying to create self-fulfilling prophecies.
The futures have the DOW down about 100.
S&P 500
Support 1473.89
The PPT is fully mobilized, there won’t be any big drop today.
That’s interesting, thanks. We’ve come nowhere near even the 10% daily down level this year.
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