Dow Jones slips on opening: Feb 20 2009

[Dawn of Light]

Shares on Wall Street have opened lower today, sending the London market even further south.

The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen more than 100 points from last night's close of 7465.95, the lowest level of the financial crisis.

Investors are feeling increasingly beleaguered by the onslaught of negative news and fears that the recession will prove to be longer and more severe than previously expected.

There are also worries that US plans to rescue banks may end up involving the nationalisation of Citigroup and Bank of America.

The Dow Jones dipped to 7327.04, nearly 140 points down on last night.

[Ullan]

At the moment predicting that the Dow will drop is like predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow from the East.

The days that either the Dow or Nasdaq have reported a gain have been very rare indeed in these last few months. As for Citigroup, considering it is now only worth 1.95 per share, which is well down from its 26.8 high last May, nationalization is pretty much inevitable. So far, Bank of America is holding out, but expect that to drop as well next week, to a point where all investors will hail a nationalization as a viable form of saving the financial 'economy'.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, considering most 'growth' economies and European banks have yet to report their yearly figures. A lot of long term business loans also expire in the next two months, and it will be interesting to see the level of defaulters in the current climate.

My estimate? These are interesting times... in the Chinese sense.

[Matt Wilkinson]

its dropped yet again, and it happened at the time predicted

[Maitaki]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-looming-collapse-of-european-banking.html

[Maitaki]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/4590512/European-banks-may-need-16.3-trillion-bail-out-EC-dcoument-warns.html