Last night's Fed action has so far failed to cheer equity markets today and with Wall Street now back in red, the FTSE 100 has ended down 60.2 points, or 1.1%, at 5,545.6.
Lower oil prices have put the Dow under pressure and after some gains early on, it is now down some 85 points at 12,307.
In the UK, the top loser is HBOS, down 7.1% at 446.25p, but well off its lows hit in torrid early trading of 398p.
Alex Potter at Collins Stewart said in a note the sell-off was overdone. "The bank is discounting more bad news than we think realistic. We see it as a 12-month underperformer but today's fall is simply overdone, in our view. We see a short-term trading opportunity," he wrote.
Miners are also down sharply today with falling metals prices. Lonmin has lost 6.9% to £30.14, Vedanta Resources is down 6% at £20.10, Kazakhmys is down 5.4% at £15.30 and BHP Billiton is down 4.9% at £14.41.
Moving to the gainers, most financial stocks staged a comeback in afternoon trading and have finished near the top of the leaders' board. Credit checker Experian is up 6% at 381.75p, Standard Chartered Bank is up 3.2% at £16.68 and Lloyds TSB is up 2.6% at 427.25p.
