The world economy saw steep drops in most major nations yesterday and experts predict at least nine more months of bad economic times before a turnaround. It took until 1942 for a serious uptick after the 1929 crash.
Yesterdays crash with a drop of 7.3% by the US Dow Jones industrial average, the biggest percentage drop since 1987, to $8579.19, other markets, closing later, responded with precipitous declines of their own.
The Financial Times reported:
London’s FTSE 100 opened 429 points or 10 per cent lower before recovering somewhat to stand 4.8 per cent weaker at 4,095.0, a loss of 217 points. The benchmark index gave up 53 points over the previous session in an afternoon surrender which wiped out an attempt at a recovery.
In Frankfurt, the Xetra Dax 30 was 9.4 per cent weaker at 4,430.9 whilst Paris’ CAC 40 fell 314 points to 3,127.8. Overall, the FTSE Eurofirst 300 was 7.5 per cent lower at 852.0.
Japanese shares fell by 11.4 per cent – the worst drop for 20 years – leading a rout of Asia-Pacific shares as fears deepened that the world’s economy was heading for recession.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped 7.19%.
Australia's S&P/ASX200 dropped a record 8.3 percent.
Russia closed its markets, but in England, Russian stocks dropped precipitously. Indonesia also closed it's market.
Mainland China's Shanghai Composite Index weathered the dark day, with a drop of just 3.6 percent.
Blue chip stocks dropped, yesterday, 7.3% bringing the drop in the last year to 39%. Blue chips!!
Gold jumped to the highest price it's been since July, $925.
Oil dropped, on fears of less demand, to $82.40, a one year low. Oil historically drops to its lowest price levels weeks before the US presidential elections, then starts to rise by inauguration time.
The Wall Street Journal reports
"U.S. stocks, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, shed $872 billion in market value on Thursday, $2.5 trillion over the last seven trading sessions, and $8.4 trillion since hitting an all-time high one year ago Thursday. The index includes almost all U.S. public companies."
Giving a historical perspective, the WSJ article reported,
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