No change to market downturn as Greece rolls the dice

Misery loves company; never has this been truer than on the markets today. Another round of poor economic data, more volatility from the permanently volatile Greece and oil’s continued descent into the abyss has seen a dismal day for DAX, Dow and FTSE alike.

After receiving another bailout this morning, Greece, that great emblem of modern financial crisis, announced a risky move that, according to Greek analysts, only has a 50/50 chance of working. The Greek government revealed its candidate for the snap election next week to be Stavros Dimas. The risk comes from the uncertainty over whether the electorate will actually vote Dimas in; if he fails in the three potential elections before the end of the year, Greece could see a general election and even more instability.

With the Greek news weighing on the global markets, it is unsurprising that it hit close to home as well, with the DAX dropping by nearly 2% to 9838.5 as it too was affected by the perfect storm of economic weakness.

This Greek risk has become the latest unwelcome news for the global indices, as UK manufacturing and industrial production contracted, and oil came closer to falling below the $65 per barrel level. The uninterrupted fall of oil is constantly sending shockwaves of bearish sentiment through the markets. The worldwide markets have been incapable of pricing in oil’s continued slump, as its nadir is becoming harder and harder to predict.

The FTSE continued to fall, by as much as 2% to 6554.3, today, as the lack of positive sentiment anywhere in the world meant the UK index had no chance of escaping its disappointing production figures unscathed. Due to the prevalence of energy companies and supermarkets on the UK index, today was a bad day all round for the FTSE as weak oil strangled its commodity-based stocks, and Tesco strangled itself with its constant poor decisions. With UK trade balance being revealed tomorrow, the FTSE will be praying for some strong numbers to drag it out of its recent dark spot.

The ever-reliant Dow also suffered today; after closing at 17866.5 last night, it opened this morning at 17874, quickly falling to 17688.5 after the bell. Like yesterday, the small amount of significant economic announcements means the markets have been at the mercy of those announcements that have disappointed. In this time of instability, any quietness on the economic front leads to the markets wallowing in bad news. In this climate, even the Dow and the dollar, recent darlings of the global markets, have failed to withstand the shear amount of doom and gloom arising from economies worldwide.