Business

Sharp swing in U.S. stocks

NEW YORK: Stock prices swung sharply in early trading on Friday as investors again dumped stocks but also scooped up shares that have been devastated by more than a week of intense and panicked selling.

The Dow Jones industrials, down nearly 700 points in the opening minutes of trading, recovered to a loss of just over 125.

Frozen credit markets and a loss of confidence in the world’s financial system have caused the Dow to drop 21 per cent in just ten trading days. The blue chip index tumbled 678 points on Thursday, and is heading to its worst weekly point drop, and one of its biggest weekly percentage drops, since being created 112 years ago.

Friday’s gyrations were likely caused the computer-driven “buy” orders that kicked in when prices had fallen far enough to make some stocks look like attractive bets.

But that buying reflected no lifting of the market’s deep despair, and selling continued.

The Dow fell 242 points to the 8,336 level. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was off 2.87 percent, while the Nasdaq composite index was down 1.16 per cent.

At the start of Friday’s session, losses for the year totalled a staggering $8.3 trillion, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S.-based companies representing almost all stocks traded in the U.S.

A stream of selling forced exchanges in Austria, Russia and Indonesia to suspend trading, and those that remained opened were hammered.

The rout in Australian markets caused traders there to call it “Black Friday.”

London’s FTSE 100 index skirted close to a 10-per cent loss before a slight pullback, while in Paris the CAC 40 dived 10.57 per cent and there were similar losses in Frankfurt.

Japan’s Nikkei-225 index closed down 9.62 per cent, Hong Kong lost 7.2 per cent and Singapore 7.34 per cent. Tokyo briefly halted some trading in futures and options as the Nikkei saw its largest fall since the crash of October 1987. — Agencies

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