Now this from Cypress. Is this how it could happen if people loose confidence in the system?

[01] Market plunges amid panic selling by small players SHARES plunged 9.4 per cent on the Cyprus Stock Exchange yesterday in a mass exodus by small investors in one of the sharpest tumbles the three- year-old bourse has ever seen. In a fall many market players expected, shares across the board took a beating as small investors dumped shares. Unfazed by the panic selling, institutional investors sat it out. Brokers said investors were disillusioned by a 6.9 per cent slump on the market last week and feared the correction could continue, while others said the #130 million IPO of co-op investment firm Demetra was also being used to further drain liquidity from the market. "We are dealing with investors who have never experienced corrections on a wide scale. It is important in cases like this not to panic," said one trader. There were mixed reactions on whether the drop would be short lived, but one stock exchange official said unspecified "corrective measures" were now expected from state officials. "That is what happened in Greece," one official said, referring to state intervention which arrested a slide on the Athens bourse in late December. Volumes were at the relatively low #20.3 million on 3,626 trades, suggesting that it was only small investors who were bowing out and not institutional ones, one broker said. It is the inexperienced investors who are selling and they shouldn't be," said CISCO broker Stavros Agrotis. Agrotis said good financial results expected from many listed companies after a buoyant 1999 rendered the decline "totally irrational". Accelerating a drop which started on weak sentiment last week, 62.45 points were razed from the all-share index, which closed at 601.58 points, a whisper above its intraday low of 598.25. Tourism, commercial and investment shares were each hammered more than 12 per cent. Industrial stocks were off 9.46 per cent. Higher losses to the general index were avoided after the heavyweight banking sector underperformed the rest of the market with a 7.6 per cent loss. The market has suffered a liquidity crunch for the past month as new investment firms have amassed some one billion pounds in initial public offerings and private placements. Some traders have said the market is also being affected by bearish signals put out by some influential brokerages. However they insisted that selling was premature. "Many (investment) funds are following a wait-and-see strategy. Once one decides to start buying they will all get in together and the jump will be very sudden," said Christakis Christodoulou of Benchmark Securities. "At the moment we are seeing investors, small investors, virtually selling off at very low prices." Fatigue caused by the furore surrounding the government's plans to tax bourse gains and also a post-holiday depression added to the sour mood, he added. _Tuesday, January 11, 2000

http://x23.deja.com/threadmsg_md.xp?AN=571668596&CONTEXT=947728616.2093023288&thitnum=6

-- c (c@deer.mouse), January 12, 2000

Answers

It was due for a massive correction anyway (much more than this tiny one). Wasn't Cyprus the best performing stock market in the world for 1999 much more so than the NASDAQ even?

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), January 12, 2000.