[cheaplaughs2]

They had to halt trading today is it just the one company
that has screwed everything up or does somebody think there's
more to it? dont care if this gets merged somwhere else just wanted
some opinion's.

[Pablo2079]

I assume there is more to it. I was just reading the "Breaking News" on CNN and it seems like there is something basically wrong with the TSE. It will be interesting to see how this drop manifests itself in the other world markets.

[peaker_2005]

The way it was explained on the news here was that there were too many trades and it was pretty much going to crash the computer system. About 4 MILLION trades apparently.

Apparently many of them were trying to SELL...

I wonder if they can see something the rest of the world doesn't?

[Colorado-Valley]

Maybe the word's out about Iran ... Americans are always last to know about these things ...

[dhfenton]

This does not appear to be oil related. It looks more like Tokyo's Enron, World Com etc. You've got a bad tech company going belly-up, and panic selling of tech stocks in general triggered a meltdown of the market. As with most markets, they halted trading to give people time to come back down to earth.

This likely will ripple to NYSE, and others, since the global economy is so inter-connected. If this were oil related you'd see a lot more blue chips involved, and the panic would likely be across the broader market. It looks like a tech bubble has burst, and probably little more than that for now.

[Liamj]

Aus. shares fell 1.6% today, which they blamed on oil prices. Then why did Woodside & Santos (oil co's) fall too?

[Novus]

Oil companies can't make money if they don't have any oil to sell.

[Eotyrant]

The Tokyo SE (and much of Japan's economy) has long been overvalued using quasi-legal book keeping techniques (See Alex Kerr's 'Of Dogs and Demons' for a clear exposition) so this really shouldn't be a surprise

[peaker_2005]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', 'A')us. shares fell 1.6% today, which they blamed on oil prices. Then why did Woodside & Santos (oil co's) fall too?

[Leanan]

Leftwing economist Stirling Newberry thinks we're on the verge of crashing and burning:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/18/151230/499

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')owever, this fed is heading us into uncharted territory, placing its faith in an untested theory of finance, that says that money will have to flow back to the US regardless, and therefore allowing the commodity winners - petro-dollar holders for example - to win will not alter the long term balance of the dollar. According to the Financial Times, it is a bet they are losing - as petro-dollars are not showing back up in the system they way they should. Instead, they are being funneled in other directions. This is why the markets have not rallied as much as they should have given the amount of investable money in the world. There is a great deal of investment demand, and it should be causing more asset inflation given how little investment supply there is.