India suicide alert as stocks crash

Discussion in 'Financial Cents' started by Bear, May 23, 2006.


  1. Bear

    Bear Monkey+++ Founding Member Iron Monkey

    http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AD2982D0-2889-4E2A-BAE9-D626FF410AF8.htm

    India suicide alert as stocks crash


    Monday 22 May 2006, 13:48 Makka Time, 10:48 GMT


    Indian police are watching out for brokers and investors attempting suicide after a market slide wiped out billions of dollars in share values.



    Policemen were keeping a watch near lakes and canals on Monday - possible places where people in distress could head to kill themselves. They said rescue teams were on alert.



    A police official in the western city of Ahmedabad, R K Patel, said: "A financial crisis can trigger suicides. We are just trying to prevent them. Till now, no such cases have been reported."



    India's Bombay Stock Exchange, which had a market value of $657 billion last week after falling 10% in the previous two sessions, slid as much as another 10% in early trade on Monday.



    The latest slump came after brokers sold the stocks they were holding as security for their clients.



    'We are finished'



    S S Gupta, a broker in Mumbai who said he had lost millions of rupees in two hours of trading on Monday morning, said: "Gold has turned into brass. We are finished."



    Ahmedabad is considered particularly vulnerable to stock market volatility.



    With more than five million retail investors, the city is one of India's main trading hubs where people have put in millions of dollars into shares.



    Sanjay Joshi, a small investor, said: "I borrowed money to trade in the market. I lost it all in the past two days.



    "I don't know how will I repay my loans."



    In the 1990s, a stock market meltdown led to several bankrupt brokers and small investors committing suicide across India, some of them drowning in rivers or throwing themselves from skyscrapers.



    Analysts described the market slide, which has been as much as 22.4% from an all-time high of 12,671.11 points on May 11, as a correction and said order should return soon.



    Rajat Jain, a chief investment officer with Principal Asset Management Company, said: "It seems overdone and the market should stabilise during the second half of this week."
     
  2. Bear

    Bear Monkey+++ Founding Member Iron Monkey

    http://yahoo.reuters.com/stocks/Quo...-05-22_22-34-08_N22242516&symbol=.BVSP&rpc=44

    WRAPUP 3-Latam assets plunge in global emerging markets slump
    Mon May 22, 2006 6:34 PM ET
    (Updates throughout)

    By Terry Wade

    SAO PAULO, May 22 (Reuters) - Latin American currencies and stocks plummeted on Monday, with some posting their biggest losses in years, as investors fled emerging markets fearing higher global interest rates and slumping prices for commodities exported by the region.

    The declines mirrored slides in Europe and Asia.

    "Perhaps the excessive love for risk has passed," Rodrigo Azevedo, the Brazilian central bank's monetary policy director, said of the worldwide drop in emerging markets that followed a prolonged honeymoon marked by record highs in April and May.

    Foreign investors have poured billions of dollars into emerging markets for much of the past two years, stomaching greater risks in exchange for higher returns than those available in the United States and Europe.

    But now investors are leaving, worried that higher U.S. rates will siphon cash out of developing countries.

    Currencies across Latin America stumbled and stock markets in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia fell over 4 percent during the day.

    The heightened volatility was triggered in part by the Federal Reserve's statement on May 10, which opened the door to further interest rate hikes that would curb faster inflation.

    "I think that people are just unsure of what the Fed is going to need to do going forward," said Jeff Grills, fund manager with JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management.

    "People are saying - it's run a lot, given that uncertainty, let's be more prudent."

    Some analysts attributed losses to statements by IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato who said in Vienna that global monetary policy may need tightening.

    Accompanying the selling, J.P. Morgan's EMBI+ index <11EMJ> -- which measures yield spreads between emerging market sovereign bonds and comparable U.S. Treasuries -- widened to levels unseen since January, marking a sharp reversal from May 1, when they were at the narrowest ever at 173 points. The index finished at 221.

    TAKING REFUGE

    Brazil's Bovespa <.BVSP> stock index closed off 3.28 percent to 36,496, its biggest loss of this year, while the real <BRBY> stumbled some 3.7 percent to 2.29 per U.S. dollar in its largest one-day drop in three years.

    Chile's IGPA <.IGPA> all-market index dropped 1.96 percent, its steepest one-day fall since November 2003, partly on concerns about lower prices for copper, a key export. Chile's peso <CLP=CL> slumped 1.18 percent to 530 per dollar.

    Mexico's IPC index <.MXX> fell 4.03 percent to 19,369 points, its largest percentage drop since September 2002. The peso <MEX01> <MXN=> lost 0.77 percent to 11.27 pesos, its weakest finish in over a year.

    Argentina's Merval <.MERV> stock index dropped 3.91 percent to 1,590 points. Colombia's peso <COP=RR> lost 1.7 percent to 2,501.8 to level not grazed since November 2004.

    "We are seeing a classic time of nervousness, people will take refuge in more quiet and secure markets," said Jose Ignacio Lopez, an economist at Santander Group in Colombia.
     
  3. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    Well could just put help line phones on the bridges so they can call and find out the best locations and times to jump to be sure they are sucessful. :dunno:

    Sorry figure if thats the way they wanna go they can go. On a related note it tends to shock and offend folks trying to slash their wrists when you hand them a loaded gun and tell them to do it right, even seems at times to change their ideas about it. [angel]
     
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7