So how did the markets finish up after last week’s monstering by fear?
In short, deeply in the red, but a little less crimson by the close on Friday.
Adding to the pressure in Asia were the fears about the possible impact of any slow-down in the Chinese economy.
That pushed losses for the Asian region and most Asian markets past 6% for the week, when falls in other regions were 3% to 4%.
The Dow in New York rose 125.38 points, or 1.25% on Friday, to 10,193.39.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 jumped 16.10 points, or 1.50%, to 1,087.69 and Nasdaq rose 25.03 points, or 1.14%, to 2,229.04.
Seeing all three had been deeply negative in early trading, it was a big turnaround.
But it was a relief rally, more to do with a feeling that the sky didn’t fall in Friday as it seemed it was doing in Thursday’s global sell-off.
Helping the better close was the ending of trading in May equity options and some options on stock indexes Friday afternoon (they were settled Saturday), meaning traders wanted to get the best from these positions and prices had fallen, then rebounded as those long gained the upper hand and shorts were forced to cover.
Early in the session the S&P 500 briefly fell below its lowest level of the May 6 "flash crash".
For the week, the S&P ended down 4.2%, the Dow lost 4% and the Nasdaq was down 5%.
The S&P 500 index is now down around 10.5% from its April 23 high and in a technical correction.
It’s not alone: in Asia, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 6.7% last week and is now off 13% from its most recent high on April 15.
China remains the gloomiest of the major markets with the Shanghai Composite Index, which entered a bear market last week, dropping 4.2% last week to be off by over 20%.
Hong Kong naturally caught the cold and fell 3% in a short week of trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 6.5%, even though there was solid economic news for much of the week.
South Korea’s market fell more than 5.5% and Australia lost 6.6% where the brawl over the resource tax added to the pressure.
But the Japanese market had its biggest weekly fall for more than a year with the 6.5% drop the biggest since January of last year.
The close on Friday was a five month low.
Australian shares ended down just 0.3%, after being down more than 3% in early trading.
The ASX 200 index dropped 11.1 points to 4305, a nine-month low.
The All Ordinaries index lost 16.6 points today, or 0.4%, to 4325.8.
Still the weekly fall here was around the level for the region and for the other major market in Japan, so the drivers were mostly the offshore fears about Europe and the cooling (if it is happening) in China.
In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600n Index fell 4.6% for the week and is now down 13% from the peak on April 15.
Markets fell in all 18 major western European markets except Spain.
Germany’s DAX lost 3.8% and France’s CAC 40 slid 3.6%, while the UK’s FTSE 100 retreated 3.8%.
Those falls are far below those for most Australian markets and the region for the week.
The China fear story is having a greater impact in this area than anywhere else, which is understandable given the way the region’s economies have outperformed the rest of the world as China has rebounded strongly.
