US, Asia markets on a ‘free fall’?
Stock markets around the world, including Asia and the US, took a battering when the markets opened today morning amid fears of higher interest rates.
What is now being described as a “bloodbath”, sudden turmoil gripped global markets triggered by the biggest ever one-day points fall in America’s Dow Jones.
On Monday, Wall Street suffered its worst percentage fall since August 2011 when Dow Jones dropped as much as 6.2 per cent in the trading last night.
The White House also admitted that it was worried. ‘We’re always concerned when the market loses any value, but we’re also confident in the economy’s fundamentals,’ an official stated yesterday.
Reuters has stated that the “trigger” could also be the data released by the US last Friday, which showed wages rising at the fastest rate since 2009, with an annual increase of 2.9 per cent, sparking worries about inflation and higher interest rates and leading to a sharp rise in US bond yields.
Amid dramatic global sell-offs, turmoil gripped investors in Europe, with markets in Germany, France, Italy and Spain all down by more than 3 per cent. London’s FTSE 100 also lost 3.5 per cent, “with every constituent falling and financial stocks hit hardest at the sector level”, according to the Financial Times.
Japanese shares were also down about 7 per cent at one point before ending 4.7 per cent lower, while markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan closed down about 5 per cent.
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