The Federal Reserve Board’s announcement of a 50 basis point cut in the Federal Funds rate this morning NZ time has failed to halt the haemorrhaging of US stock markets.

The three major Wall St market indices took a dive immediately following the announcement today. Today's falls follow the worst week in the stock market's history last week when more than 11% of the market's paper value disappeared.

The blue chip Dow Jones index closed today on 9720.76 points down 238.35 or 2.39% for the day.
(GRAPH LINK: http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=^DJI&d=5d)

The technology Nasdaq index closed on 1857.44 points down 93.74 or 4.80%.
(GRAPH LINK: http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=^IXIC&d=5d)

The broader S&P 500 index closed on 1142.62 points down 28.19 or 2.41%
(GRAPH LINK: http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=^SPC&d=5d)

The markets had been hoping for a 75 basis point cut or larger and commentators have suggested that the sell off is due to the announced cut being insufficiently large.

US Markets have now closed but the fallout from the US moves is likely to reverberate through Asian markets today.

In early trading at 10am NZT the NZSE40 index is down close to 1%, 19.75 points, on 2096.78 points.

To watch the impact on the Asian and European share markets as they open see…
http://quote.yahoo.com/m2

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Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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