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October's market storm warning is still in force

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Why you can trust SCMP
Tom Holland

At the very bottom of last October's panic-driven selling in global stock markets, Monitor stuck its neck out.

Just because markets were in undoubted overshoot territory, with equity valuations plumbing their lowest levels in years, did not necessarily mean that shares offered a great buying opportunity, argued the October 28 column.

'The trickle of corporate defaults and failures of recent weeks could turn into a flood as business conditions worsen, further damaging sentiment and forcing share prices even lower,' it warned.

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Well, that prediction has proved partly right. Although stock markets around the world initially rebounded once the forced selling abated, investors' high spirits have since been dampened by a constant stream of bad news.

Last week, with fears mounting once again over the health of the US financial system, the closely followed Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped below October's trough, even falling below the lows seen in March 2003, in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq (see the first chart below).

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Yet if October's warning was partly right, there is no doubt that so far it has proved mostly wrong.

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