Stock prices have been slammed ever since trading resumed Monday after the longest shutdown since the Depression. The USA is on the verge of a war with an unknown enemy. The economy, in the words of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, has ground to a halt. Corporate earnings are dropping fast, and layoffs are mounting due to massive disruptions to U.S. businesses, a result of the terrorist strikes. Pretty much everyone who still owns stocks.
Big institutions top the list.
Thursday, when the Dow plunged 383 points to 8376, professional investors were regularly putting in sell orders of 100,000 shares for blue chips such as General Electric and Microsoft. Block trades ranging from 10,000 shares to 30,000 shares were the rule, not the exception. Individual investors have caught the selling bug, too. There are signs that mutual fund investors are taking losses and shifting into bonds and money market funds. But those small adjustments add up.