JAPAN: NIKKEI PLUNGES 9.4%
October 8th, 2008Via: AP:
Japan’s stock market plummeted 9.4 percent — its biggest one-day drop in 21 years — Wednesday as investors rushed for the exits on deepening fears over the global financial crisis.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index nose-dived 952.58 points to 9,203.32, a five-year low. That was its third-biggest drop in percentage terms and the largest plunge since October 1987.
Toyota’s shares fell nearly 12 percent on concerns about its earnings amid a slump in the vital U.S. car market.
The massive sell-off in Tokyo follows a sharp retreat on Wall Street Tuesday, when the Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 5 percent despite steps by the Federal Reserve to reinvigorate dormant credit markets.
“Selling on Wall Street triggered further selling in Tokyo. It’s like a chain reaction,” said Kazuhiro Takahashi, general manager at Daiwa Securities SMBC Co. Ltd.
“No one knows the bottom of the ongoing financial crisis, and investors were really spooked by growing uncertainty over the global credit crisis,” he said.
Selling accelerated as investors were pessimistic that the finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations would announce any effective measures at their meeting in Washington on Friday to tackle the global financial crisis, Takahashi said.
“Investors were taking a wait-and-see approach over the upcoming meeting, but today’s massive selling indicated that they were not so hopeful for concrete action by the G7,” he said.
The Nikkei index has lost a staggering 24 percent in the last two weeks.
