The market's early positive reaction to the Irish bailout seems a long time ago, with an opening fall in the US adding to the growing gloom surrounding Europe.
Wall Street is around 150 points lower as the worries about the Eurozone debt crisis spreading to Portugal and Spain outweighed positive news on the Black Friday shopping spree in the US. A lukewarm response to a sale of Italian bonds has also undermined sentiment. So the FTSE 100 has now fallen 102.08 points to 5566.62, while the euro is at a new two month low against the dollar. One of the major worries is that the European bailout fund would not be big enough to support Spain if it needed financial aid, helping to push the cost of insuring Spanish and Portuguese debt against default rising to record highs. Comments from the European Central Bank after Thursday's meeting will be keenly scrutinised for clues as to what its next move may be.
HSBC is currently the only FTSE 100 stock in positive territory, after positive comments from JP Morgan Cazenove. Caz likes HSBC because of its emerging markets exposure - and its lack of exposure to the Eurozone. HSBC is up 1p at 652.1p.
