On Monday all of the markets that I watch had a big down day.  Asia had trouble digesting Fridays news from the US. They had a big drop in GDP, plus bank failures etc.  This set the tone for the FTSE opening down 92.5 (March futures), to finish the day down 194 points to close at 3613.5  This is below the November lows mentioned a couple of days ago but is still above the October 2003 lows of around 3250.

Meanwhile on the US markets the S&P500 is hovering close to the 700 level.  This is a psychological support level.  The DJIA closed below 7000 for the first time since 1 May 1997.  The cause of all the selling is varied.  Some suggest that the punters are coming to realise that things are worse than they have been lead to believe up to now.

AIG – the American International Group - is getting another 30 Billion helping hand from the government, after announcing that it has lost $61.7 billion in the last quarter, setting a record for the biggest ever loss by a US company.  Not the sort of record you want to be setting. Then the ISM manufacturing index showed a very slight improvement rising to 35.8 from the previous months 35.6  But anything under 50 is indicating a contraction in manufacturing, and now there have been 13 consecutive months of contraction. There is no good news out there to halt the slide, but we can expect a bounce soon, even if only of the “dead cat” variety.

I meant to post this before I went back to work, nut now I have just got home and the FTSE has beeen open 2 hours to be 15 points down, the pre open S&P500 futures are up 3 points, which is not much considering yesterdays drop.