From The Chicago Tribune:
One of Wall Street’s ugliest days in recent years actually started in Shanghai, where a massive sell-off in Chinese equities prompted a global market downturn exacerbated by fears of a slowing U.S. economy.
Tuesday was a day of several notable calamities in the markets, among them the seventh-worst performances by the Dow Jones industrial average, which in one heart-stopping moment at about 2 p.m. Central time plummeted nearly 200 points.
The cause of the sudden afternoon nose dive was a computer glitch that delayed trading news and then released it in one torrent, Dow Jones officials said. But there was no distortion of the day’s overall performance: a loss of 416.02 points, or 3.29 percent, for Wall Street’s most-watched index, the biggest single-day point drop since Sept. 17, 2001, the day markets reopened after 9/11. [Full Text]
Read also: Perils of a Plunging Chinese Market on China Confidential blog.
