The London stock market seemed to carry the weight of the world on its back yesterday but, unlike the Greek god Atlas, it collapsed under the strain.
The FTSE 100 suffered its biggest one-day points fall since 1987 as it dropped 190.4 to 5477.0. At one point, the Footsie was 212.3 points off at 5455.1.
However, the London market was far from alone in its travails. Troubles pressed in from all over the globe, including Russia, Venezuela and the US.
As share prices fell round the world, investors switched into bonds, with historic yield-lows being recorded in the US and Germany. The benchmark gilt in Britain gained more than half a point.
The big falls yesterday put paid to hopes that the recent correction might be over. "The market is looking very bearish indeed. We saw a classic squeeze earlier in the week, which was only a temporary respite from reality," said one senior trader. "The backdrop remains very worrying indeed. What scares me is the big sell-off in France and Germany."
However, after Footsie's biggest-ever one-day points gain on Tuesday, yesterday's drop still left the blue chip index up on the week. It was harder work for the medium and smaller-sized stocks; the FTSE 250 index lost another 84.8 points to 5074.5 yesterday to be 2.1 per cent down on the week.
Turnover was fairly modest, however, with only 767.3m shares traded, of which 57 per cent was in non-Footsie stocks. That figure does not point to any widespread selling pressure.
