Morning Call by Greg Secker

Well what another bumper day we had on the markets yesterday! I think it was fair to say that after Mondays trading sessions we expected a fair amount of carnage in the market. And that’s exactly what we got!
So yesterdays market movements continued to be driven by panic and fear. Assessing the damage, we can see that not surprisingly equities continued to plummet through all time zones.
The FTSE had a strange day initially performing a dead cat bounce before news that major UK banks were in talks with the Government to secure a lending package sent the markets once again tumbling. The FTSE closed down 80 points and 4605. The biggest losers were HBOS and RBS who slipped 42 & 39 % respectively despite the ban on short selling!
The primary risk asset for most US investors is the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average which tumbled over 508 points to close below 9500 for the first time in many years where it closed on its lows at 9447.
Today should be another an interesting day. Whilst there are no major planned economic announcements today we already have details that Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced details of a 50bn pound rescue package for the UK banking system. The initiative is aimed at stabilising the financial system by giving banks who usually rely on world money markets greater access to cash.
Naturally people will be interested to see what effect Ben Bernanke’s comments last night will have had. Whether we will see a panic cutting of rates remains to be seen.
The DOW Futures are being called down -180 and the FTSE daily future is being called down 49 points. Crude Oil is trading at 88.68 dollars a barrel and Gold is trading at 886 dollars a troy ounce.