After its 3,800-point fall yesterday, all eyes will be on the close in Tokyo this morning, but the signs yesterday were that the hurricane that has swept the world’s stockmarkets since Wall Street scored its century on Friday is losing its force, albeit temporarily. Wall Street appeared to spend much of the day triing to start the laborious pro-cess of base-building around the low plumbed on what is already firmly in the annals as Black Mon-day, and that was on volume that was already half that of Monday’s record by lunchtime. IBM, which was down around $106 at the New York close Monday, had already recovered to be off only $9 on the day in after-hours trading in Los Angeles, and had set-tled at $112 in New York by 1pm local time. However, these days, Wall Street’s verdict on the day is typically written in the final hour of trading, so its resting place was still in the lap of the some very angry gods as we went to press. Another crazy day in the City saw the Financial Times 30 share index down 136 at 1,495 at 5.25pm with the broader FT-SE 100 index down 242 at 1,810. Because of the lag in updating prices on the screens, the Stock Exchange decided to keep the indices open indefinitely. Normally, official closing prices are calculated at 3.30pm. Amidst the panic, several rumours of bankruptcy appeared. At start of trade in London, up to four Wall Street firms were said to be ready to file for Chapter XI, while here at home, the broking arm of one of the big banks was said to have lost UKP100m since the beginning of the week. In the electronics sector, Apricot was off only 1p on the day at 108p, but others fared badly. Thorn EMI closed at 604, off 61p, after touching 563p. Amstrad hit 95p before trading op-ened, climbing to 134p by the close. STC finished at 233p from 271p, Plessey at 183p from 194p, Ferranti at 97p from 115p after touching 81p earlier.
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