stocks plunge

wow..stocks indeed plunge..and this meltdown has affected so many people's portfolio...:( hope this will end soon

Japan says watching markets with urgency as stocks plunge - Yahoo! News

 

Japanese policymakers voiced growing alarm on Tuesday over upheavals in financial markets and a worsening global economic outlook as stocks plunged and the yen edged back to highs scaled prior to last week's intervention.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said he would watch markets with a sense of urgency after stocks tumbled on recession fears, while Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said the uncertain outlook for the world economy posed a major risk for Japan.

Tokyo's Nikkei share average <.N225> plunged more than 4 percent, falling below 9,000 for the first time since mid-March, after Wall Street lost more than 6 percent in a flight-to-safety sell-off following the U.S. government's loss of its top credit rating.

"I will pay close attention to market movements with a sense of urgency today," Noda told reporters when asked about the stock market falls and a persistently strong yen despite Japan's solo intervention last week to stem its rise.

The Japanese currency was trading at around 77.35 yen against the dollar, close to a four-month high of 76.29 yen hit last week before Tokyo intervened and way off post-intervention levels of more than 80 yen to the dollar.

Japan sold a record of more than 4 trillion yen last Thursday to prevent the yen's climb from derailing the economy's recovery from the damage wrought by the triple-blow of a massive earthquake and tsunami and a radiation crisis at a damaged nuclear power plant.

The central bank also stepped in, loosening monetary policy by boosting its asset buying scheme by half to 15 trillion yen in a move aimed both at making the intervention more effective and shoring up market confidence.

But the effects of the joint effort, Japan's third foray into currency markets in less than a year, have worn off quickly as fears that twin debt crises in the United States and Europe could tip the world economy back into recession drove investors into low-risk assets such as the yen, gold and Swiss franc.

Shirakawa told parliament he still expected the world's third largest economy to return to moderate growth, but highlighted increased overseas risks to such a scenario.

Minutes of the central bank's meeting in July showed that its board was increasingly worried about the global economic outlook and two of its members were already advocating further monetary easing.

Despite Japan's own troubles with public debt twice the size of the $5 trillion economy, post-quake recession and political stalemate, its deep bond market is seen as one of the relatively few safe investments both by Japanese and foreign investors.