(Michael Snyder) It’s official – global stocks have entered a bear market. On Wednesday, we learned that the MSCI All-Country World Index has fallen a total of more than 20 percent from the peak of the market. So that means that roughly one-fifth of all the stock market wealth in the entire world has already been wiped out. How much more is it going to take before everyone will finally admit that we have a major financial crisis on our hands? 30 percent? 40 percent? This new round of chaos began last night in Asia. Japanese stocks were down more than 600 points and Hong Kong was down more than 700 points.
The nightmare continued to roll on when Europe opened, and European stocks ended up down about 3.2 percent when the markets over there finally closed. In the U.S., it looked like it was going to be a truly historic day for a while there. At one point the Dow had fallen 566 points, but a curious rebound resulted in a loss of only 249 points for the day. As bad as things are in the U.S. right now, the truth is that we still have a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the planet. Around the world, many major stock indexes are already down more than 30 or 40 percent. Overall, the MSCI All-Country World Index is now down 20 percent, which officially puts us in bear market territory…FULL REPORT
