Precious Metals

The crisis formerly known as subprime is reaching the status of an emergency. And as we speak, two hurricanes are brewing in the south.

Credit problems at a leveraged prime mortgage lender and lowered expectations from Wal-Mart conspired to send the Dow tumbling 200 points once more.

The Dow spent all day in solid positive territory on low volume, only to slip away at the death.

Wall Street gyrated wildly on Friday, ending virtually unchanged as the Fed and ECB stepped up their liquidity injections.

Last night the ECB made a startling move by injecting E95bn into the banking system as BNP Paribas froze three hedge funds through lack of liquidity. The Dow fell 387 points.

The Dow rose 153 points last night, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

A slowing economy on the back of the sub-prime crisis means the US no longer leads the world in base metal consumption, but an expected pick-up in coming months keeps Barclays positive on the sector.

It was a case of bad news can be good news on Wall Street as the Fed decided not to ease rates in the face of the credit crunch. The Dow pulled back losses to be up 35 points.

I was the biggest up-tick since October 2002, but traders remained unconvinced of the integrity of last night’s rally. Oil finally tipped over.

Weak jobs data set the market off again as a US mortgage lender went under and Bear Stearns fuelled the pessimism.