The stocks from the United States have gone down once again which has led the Dow Jones Industrial Average to go low for over 400 points for the fourth time this month due to a collective investor concern on the state of the global economy at the moment. Investors feel that the global economy is slowing down, is very weak and they see that the European banks do not have enough capital to sustain business.
Caterpillar Inc and FedEx Corp declined by 4.9% due to more unemployment claims and a rise in consumer prices. Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc declined by over 6% after a decline in the European lenders. Hewlett Packard Co was down by 6% following its slash of profits announcement.
The Standard & Poor 500 index was down by 4.5% to 1,140.65 in the afternoon in New York. All the ten groups in the S&P500 slid at least 1.2% and only about 10 stocks were able to move up. The Dow was down by 419.63 points or 3.7% to 10,990.58. Treasuries were moving up which pushed 10 year yields to a record low. There are about 11.6 billion shares that changed hands in the United States exchanges in the afternoon which is according to Bloomberg’s data, about 44% over than the quarter average.
According to Michael Mullaney, from Fiduciary Trust, “It’s almost like a worldwide buyers strike. There’s a general malaise on global economic activity. People continue to downgrade their expectations on growth. There’s concern about funding problems. That’s making us very nervous and we want to take risk out of portfolios at least for the immediate future.”
Tags: World economy, fiduciary trust, New York, European lenders, collective investor concern, Dow Jones, Dow 30
