EW YORK (CNNMoney) — Investors lost a trillion dollars in the in the stock market Monday as the debt crisis in Europe, lackluster economic news and a downgrade to the U.S. credit rating spark fears of a double-dip recession.
The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, the broadest index of U.S. stocks, lost 891.93 points, or just over 7%, Monday. This represents a paper loss for the day of approximately $1.0 trillion.
NEW YORK, Aug 8 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks plunged on Monday
and investors fled to the safety of gold and bonds after the
downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor’s stoked
fears the United States is slipping into recession.
Wall Street slumped as much as 6 percent by mid-afternoon
and European stocks hit a two-year low. A favored gauge of
investor anxiety spiked well above 40, a sign investors are
afraid of more declines to come. The CBOE Volatility Index
.VIX surged 41.9 percent at 45.40.
Investors were struggling to discern the effects of the
U.S. credit rating downgrade to AA-plus from AAA, which could
hit various components of the vast U.S. financial sector, from
mortgage lenders to municipal issuers and insurers.
ompanies that allow home investors to trade foreign currencies are coming under fire as regulators consider whether to put more rules on the fast-growing but risky market.
Currency brokers allow ordinary Americans to speculate on the value of dollars, euros and yen, and have grown revenue 374% since 2007, drawing in 615,000 American traders, according to the Aite Group consulting firm.
The most intense recent criticism of these brokers came from a hedge fund manager who researches and invests in companies that cater to home investors.
Why Trade the News
The simple answer to that question is “To make more money!”
But in all seriousness, trading the news gives us another opportunity to trade the forex market. As we learned in the previous section, news is a very important part to the market because it’s what makes it move!
When news comes out, especially important news that everyone is watching, you can expect to see some major movement. Your goal as a trader is to get on the right side of the move, but the fact that you know the market will indeed move somewhere makes it an opportunity definitely worth looking at.
Gold stocks normally amplify the gains from gold. If gold goes up 10%, then a good gold stock should go up 20%. So traders look for this ‘leverage’ to the gold price in gold stocks.
That was until ETFs became such a big force on the market.
Now traders can invest directly in gold ETFs with borrowed money to get the same effect. It saves having to do all that annoying research into a gold company.
So with all that money heading for the ETFs – instead of the stocks – the gold price and gold stocks are diverging.