Share price falls are accelerating as a wave of bad news from the US spreads through the market.
Apart from the OECD's earlier comments that US sub-prime write-offs could total $300bn, there has been a host of negative news. US consumer confidence is at its lowest for two years, quarterly house sales are down 2%, while US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson told the Wall Street Journal that home loan defaults were likely to be higher in 2008 than in 2007.
No wonder there were rumours yesterday the US Federal Reserve was considering an emergency rate cut. If that had happened, though, the markets would probably have treated that as a panic measure.
Still, things are hardly calm at the moment. With Wall Street down around 180 points at the moment, the FTSE 100 is now down 173.2 points at 6053.3.
Daily Mail & General Trust is among the big fallers, down nearly 10% despite an 11% rise in full year profits. Analysts were struggling to explain the fall, beyond a general worry about the outlook and its exposure to financial media group Euromoney, which said last week the credit crunch had cast a shadow over its future performance.
UBS analysts said: "DMGT expects 2008 to see steady earnings growth, but only assuming the UK economy does not see a downturn. The luke-warm outlook means that consensus forecasts for the coming year are unlikely to change.
"With no visibility on Euromoney and downside risk to the UK consumer, the lack of
visibility may hold back the stock. Separately, DMGT is at risk of dropping out of
the FTSE 100."
