Asian stocks fall (off the cliff) on global slowdown concern

Asian stocks fell on concern the U.S. will enter a recession and slow global growth. Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped to its lowest since October 2005, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index plunged the most since the September 2001 attacks. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 3.6% to 141.57 at 5:11 p.m. in Tokyo, heading for its lowest close since Aug. 17. The measure is entering its fourth week of losses, and has declined 18% since its Nov. 1 record.

- The stock market action today could be mildly described as "falling off the cliff". Singapore's STI Straits Times Index went into a free-fall, dropping 187.10 points to break below the 3000 level, and closed at 2917.15. They sure chose a hell of a time to revamp the index. Probably couldn't have picked a worse time.

Meanwhile, Japan's Nikkei dropped 535 points, and China's Shanghai SSE index fell 266 points to close at 4914.435, below the 5000 level and way below the heady heights of 6,124.04 on 16 Oct 2007 (which isn't very long ago). So much for the hypothesis that "China won't drop before the 2008 Olympics". It can, and it did. This is January 2008. The Olympics are in August 2008.

And in terms of number of points dropped, India's Sensex takes the gold medal, dropping by 1408 points to close at 17,605.35. Whatever happened to 21,000? 20,000? 19,000? Umm ... 18,000? It wasn't too long ago, 9 Jan 2008 to be exact, when some of those who had a vested interest in the Indian market were crowing about 21,113.13. That's a drop of 16%, by the way.

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