Property market changing?

[getting worse]

the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 800 points at its
nadir for its biggest ever intraday point drop, and finished below 10000 for the first time since Oct. 26, 2004.

While U.S. stocks rebounded late in the session with the Dow recouping more than 400 points, European stock markets had their worst percentage performance ever on Monday. Not even the prospects of $700 billion in government assistance for the credit markets could break a crisis of confidence in banks worldwide.

The effects of financial crisis on the broader economy continued to show up in corporate warnings, notably from German software maker SAP as well as Bank Of America.

[property next togo]

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Tantallon Capital, founded by Merrill Lynch & Co. former head of sales Nicholas Harbinson, closed one of its hedge funds after the Singapore-based firm had its worst performance because of bad bets on Asian stocks, three people familiar with the matter said.

The Tantallon Smaller Companies Fund, managed by Steve Sun, lost 25.6 percent this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, more than twice a benchmark that tracks similar funds. Assets shrank to $18 million as of end July, from as much as $29 million in February, the people said, asking not to be identified because details are private.

Assets in Tantallon Capital’s flagship Tantallon Fund, which underperformed peers this year following double-digit returns from 2004 to 2007, decreased 40 percent as clients withdrew money. Tantallon Capital is the fourth-largest hedge fund in Singapore with $1.43 billion assets under management.

[s'pore affected?]

but of course ....
Nervous Days as U.S. Consumers Tighten Belts

By Louis Uchitelle, Andrew Martin and Stephanie Rosenbloom
6 October 2008

Cowed by the financial crisis, American consumers are pulling back on their spending, all but guaranteeing that the economic situation will get worse before it gets better.

In response to the falling value of their homes and high gasoline prices, Americans have become more frugal all year. But in recent weeks, as the financial crisis reverberated from Wall Street to Washington, consumers appear to have cut back sharply. Even with the government beginning a giant bailout of the financial system, their confidence may have been too shaken to resume their free-spending ways any time soon.

Recent figures from companies, and interviews across the country, show that automobile sales are plummeting, airline traffic is dropping, restaurant chains are struggling to fill tables, customers are sparse in stores.

When the final tally is in, consumer spending for the quarter just ended will almost certainly shrink, the first quarterly decline in nearly two decades. Many economists, who began the third quarter expecting modest growth, now believe the cutbacks are so severe that the overall economy did not expand either, and they warn that a consumer-led recession could be more severe than the relatively mild one earlier this decade.