Ok, all of you know it alls, and I refer to Top and SF, when is this going to end? Contrary to Topper's poor assumptions, I actually have a little stock outside of my 401k. One of them, which I bought at 7 last year and hit 30 this summer, is now down to 12. I am none too happy.
I thought this would have settled down by now?
Global Markets Tumble Amid Mortgage Crisis
By WAYNE ARNOLD
SINGAPORE, Aug. 16 — Stocks in Asia continued their downward spiral today amid the widening fallout from the United States’ subprime mortgage crisis. The decline was led by shares in South Korea, as local investors returned from a national holiday there and joined the stampede by foreign investors trying to sell.
Across Europe, markets were also sustaining heavy losses in early trading.
And markets in the United States were expected to open lower again today. Stock index futures fell sharply following the latest sign that the Federal Reserve is reluctant to cut rates in the midst of the markets’ turbulence, Reuters reported. “It’s a kind of a panic among individual investors,” said Cho Hong Rae, head of research at Korea Investment & Securities in Seoul, adding that domestic retail investors had up until today generally been buying shares as they declined.
The South Korean benchmark stock index suffered its biggest decline in more than five years today, falling nearly 7 percent late in the afternoon in Asia after an initial 10 percent plunge that forced the Korea Exchange to suspend trading for 20 minutes.
Similar declines occurred in Indonesia and the Philippines, where stocks also fell by roughly 7.7 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Declines in the region’s other big markets were less severe, but still dramatic: Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average fell by about 2 percent; and Hong Kong’s benchmark dropped by about 3.5 percent.
Chinese stocks were lower too. During recent trading sessions, they have brushed off drops in other parts of the world.
Australia was also hit today by more repercussions from the credit crisis in the United States. Rams Home Loans Group, a nonbank lender which earlier in the week warned that its earnings could be hurt by rising costs for its United States borrowings, confirmed today that it had been unable to refinance $5 billion in debt.
Analysts in Australia said Rams’s problems were unlikely to have much effect on the country’s banks, because they do not rely significantly on borrowing from the United States.
“In the end the impact on them will not be so severe,” said Ben Zucker, an analyst at Macquarie Bank in Sydney.
Nonetheless, companies and financial institutions that had taken advantage of a booming American appetite for debt to borrow United States dollars cheaply and fund costs at home in Australia where the currency has been appreciating are likely to suffer a sudden whiplash effect now as interest rates rise and the United States dollar regains ground, he said.
In South Korea, Mr. Cho said that most domestic selling was still by individuals trying to unload individual stocks. So far, he said, local mutual funds were not seeing a market increase in redemptions that would force them to join the selling. And automatic contributions to pension funds were still being made to big institutions, which were taking advantage of the latest declines to buy stocks more cheaply, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/b...ox.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
I thought this would have settled down by now?
Global Markets Tumble Amid Mortgage Crisis
By WAYNE ARNOLD
SINGAPORE, Aug. 16 — Stocks in Asia continued their downward spiral today amid the widening fallout from the United States’ subprime mortgage crisis. The decline was led by shares in South Korea, as local investors returned from a national holiday there and joined the stampede by foreign investors trying to sell.
Across Europe, markets were also sustaining heavy losses in early trading.
And markets in the United States were expected to open lower again today. Stock index futures fell sharply following the latest sign that the Federal Reserve is reluctant to cut rates in the midst of the markets’ turbulence, Reuters reported. “It’s a kind of a panic among individual investors,” said Cho Hong Rae, head of research at Korea Investment & Securities in Seoul, adding that domestic retail investors had up until today generally been buying shares as they declined.
The South Korean benchmark stock index suffered its biggest decline in more than five years today, falling nearly 7 percent late in the afternoon in Asia after an initial 10 percent plunge that forced the Korea Exchange to suspend trading for 20 minutes.
Similar declines occurred in Indonesia and the Philippines, where stocks also fell by roughly 7.7 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Declines in the region’s other big markets were less severe, but still dramatic: Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average fell by about 2 percent; and Hong Kong’s benchmark dropped by about 3.5 percent.
Chinese stocks were lower too. During recent trading sessions, they have brushed off drops in other parts of the world.
Australia was also hit today by more repercussions from the credit crisis in the United States. Rams Home Loans Group, a nonbank lender which earlier in the week warned that its earnings could be hurt by rising costs for its United States borrowings, confirmed today that it had been unable to refinance $5 billion in debt.
Analysts in Australia said Rams’s problems were unlikely to have much effect on the country’s banks, because they do not rely significantly on borrowing from the United States.
“In the end the impact on them will not be so severe,” said Ben Zucker, an analyst at Macquarie Bank in Sydney.
Nonetheless, companies and financial institutions that had taken advantage of a booming American appetite for debt to borrow United States dollars cheaply and fund costs at home in Australia where the currency has been appreciating are likely to suffer a sudden whiplash effect now as interest rates rise and the United States dollar regains ground, he said.
In South Korea, Mr. Cho said that most domestic selling was still by individuals trying to unload individual stocks. So far, he said, local mutual funds were not seeing a market increase in redemptions that would force them to join the selling. And automatic contributions to pension funds were still being made to big institutions, which were taking advantage of the latest declines to buy stocks more cheaply, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/b...ox.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
