Hopefully the big falls on our market may ease today after wall Street came back from a 184 point loss to close up 5.7 points.
That was after the Australian share market had entered correction territory after shedding 3.1% of its value yesterday.
That erased last week’s 2.9% gain after the big jump a week ago yesterday.
That took the loss since the most recent closing high on April 15 of 5,024 points on the All Ords, to 523 points, or 10.4% at yesterday’s close of 4500.
The loss on the ASX 200 is slightly more, 558 points, or around 11.1%.
A correction is a fall of 10% or more from the market’s most recent closing high.
The unrest in Thailand, unease about Europe and the euro and no doubt China, the resource rent tax and anything else that worried investors yesterday could be blamed for the very sharp fall that brought back memories of the gloomy days in late 2008.
The euro fell under $US1.23 in Asian and early European trading where it touched the lowest it has been since April 2006, a four year low.
The Australian dollar dropped well under 88 USc and was down around a cent at 87.50 USc last night.
OIl and copper fell overnight (oil dropped under $US70 a barrel briefly) and gold eased.
European markets attempted a bounce, but that eased and Wall Street was weaker, but staged a rally at the end of trading to finish weak, but not down heavily.
At the close in Sydney, the local market was down 3.1% or more while market in Asia fell more than 2%.
Tokyo fell heavily to touch a two month low, Seoul fell more than 2% as well.
The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo fell 2.2%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 2.4%.
The Shanghai Composite slid 5.1%, extending its losses since January to 22% and closer to 25% since the peak last November.
That’s real bear territory.
European markets were down last night and US future trading had Wall Street off more than 1%.
The ASX200 index was down 143.9 points, or 3.1%, at 4467.2, the lowest close in more than eight months.
The broader All Ordinaries index slumped 142.3 points, or 3.1% as well to 4500.7.
More than $40 billion was wiped off the value of the market yesterday.
Of these, the worries about Europe were the more significant, along with the concerns about the new tax.
Markets in Asia concentrated on the fears about Europe; the Australian tax concerns are not that big an issue offshore.
So despite some good news for the Japanese economy on machinery orders and a slight easing in wholesale price deflation, Tokyo still had a bad day, shedding around 2% in value against our losses of around 3.1%.
Wall Street fell sharply last Friday, but had recovered a bit of ground towards the end.
The real concern was the way US bond yields fell as investors parked their money in US dollars for a modest return.
The 10 year bond yield traded around Friday’s 3.44% level overnight before ending slightly weaker at 3.47%.
In Thailand, at least 37 people are now confirmed dead since late last week and the toll since the current protests started in March is closing on 60. Hundreds more have been injured.
Toyota raised eyebrows yesterday by announcing that it was suspending production at one of its car plants near Bangkok and moving the production to its two other plants ion the country.
The Thai market lost 2.7% yesterday on growing fears the economy will be badly damaged by the unrest and killings.
The Australian Government has warned that anyone thinking of travelling to Thailand should reconsider their need to travel to the country because of the deterioration in security.
Two way trade for Australia and Thailand is around $18 billion a year, much of it motor vehicles from the likes of Toyota and Honda, plus tourism from Australia.
