The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) took a nosedive as trade opened on Sunday morning. The TA 25 Index was losing 5.85 percent and the TA 100 Index was plummeting by 6.55%, while the technology and real estate indexes were still suffering staggering losses of 12.84% and 10.02%, respectively.
Trade on the TASE was postponed by 45 minutes Sunday morning due to the heavy projected losses. The rules of the Stock Market dictate that a predicted fluctuation of over 5% at 9:45 a.m., 15 minutes before trade is scheduled to open, postpones trade by 45 minutes. A depreciation of over 12 percent in the TA 25 Index would cause trade to be called off altogether.
Trade on the TASE was frozen for four days last week due to Yom Kippur. Over that period, world markets continued to plummet and the Israeli market was expected to respond to the cumulative losses on Sunday.
Stock markets plummeted still lower on Wall Street and around the world Friday despite all efforts to slow the selling stampede.
A sign of how bad things have gotten: A drop of 128 points in the Dow Jones industrials was greeted with sighs of relief after the index had plummeted much further on previous days.
The week ended as the Dow's worst ever, with the index down an incredible 40.3 percent since its record close almost exactly one year earlier, on Oct. 9. 2007.
Investors suffered a paper loss of $2.4 trillion for the week, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index, and for the past year the losses have totaled $8.4 trillion.
It was no better overseas. Britain's FTSE index ended below the 4,000 level for the first time in five years; Germany's DAX fell 7 percent and France's CAC-40 finished down 7.7 percent.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 9.6 percent, also hitting a five-year low. For the week, the Nikkei lost nearly a quarter of its value. Russia's market never even opened.
(Jerusalem Post)
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