Tuesday mayhem on global markets
16 Mar 2011
With Japan's nuclear crisis escalating, fear spread across financial markets on Tuesday, sending stocks tumbling in a rout that wiped out about $650 billion in value.
Gold fell 3 per cent at one point as the global equity sell-off forced sale of bullion to cover equity losses.
Oil prices took a beating with Brent crude futures LCOc1 below $108 for the first time in three weeks, though unrest in Bahrain and Libya arrested the slide.
European shares closed at their lowest in 3-1/2 months, while the Nasdaq almost pared all its gains for 2011.
The CBOE VIX volatility index .VIX, also known as Wall Street's ''fear index'', was up 12.7 per cent.
The "fear trade" saw widespread selling in high-yield "junk" bonds, crude oil and global stocks. MSCI's all-country world stock index .MIWD00000PUS, which was valued at about $28.6 trillion on Monday, shed more than $1 trillion when Wall Street opened but recouped losses as the turmoil eased somewhat.