KURO WEDNESDAY?….What the hell?
Investors spooked by a raid on an Internet company and weaker U.S. tech earners dumped Japanese shares Wednesday, sending the Nikkei plunging and prompting the Tokyo Stock Exchange to suspend trading on the world’s second-largest market.
The TSE halted all trade 20 minutes early at 2:40 p.m. (0540 GMT), as the number of trades neared the 4-million capacity limit of the exchange.
….The massive selling on Wednesday came as investors became nervous over an investigation into Japanese Internet company Livedoor, allied to weaker than expected results from Intel and Yahoo in the United States.
The TSE’s technical problems are one thing, but the proximate cause of Wednesday’s massive selloff is quite another. Livedoor may be a typically overpriced dotcom with an unsustainable market cap, but it’s still not that big a company. Is the Japanese stock market really so jittery that the mere prospect of problems at a smallish company like Livedoor can send it into a panic?
