Stock drop pulls 38 indexes into bear market

Almost half of the world's biggest stock indexes fell into a bear market as mounting concern about a U.S. recession dragged down banking and retail shares across Asia, Europe and Latin America. The MSCI World Index's 3% decline yesterday [21 Jan 2008], the steepest since 2002, left benchmarks in France, Mexico, Italy and 35 other countries at least 20% below their highs in the last year. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index may post its biggest decline since 2001 when the U.S. market resumes trading today after the Martin Luther King Day holiday, futures showed.

Japan became the first of the world's 10 biggest stock markets in November to enter a bear market since the summer's U.S. subprime mortgage collapse. Among 80 equity national equity benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg, indexes in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Namibia, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Venezuela and Vietnam also have dropped at least 20% from recent highs.

- The bear has arrived, but some of the "buy-if-you-dare" folks will be busy looking at possible support levels for the stocks and indexes they are following. As fellow contrarian shooperman puts it, "I'll be damned if it breaks below 0.00".

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