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September's stocks nightmare
By CNN's Jim Boulden
LONDON, England (CNN) -- September has traditionally been one of the worst performing months for stock markets and 2002 has been no exception. As the final session of this quarter comes to a close, investors are hoping it will mark an end to the September blues. It has been a month to forget for equities, with harsh losses on all of Europe's major bourses. And it has been a terrible month for shares capped off a terrible quarter. "We've got a host of problems," David Thwaites at BNP Paribas told CNN. "Specifically what's going to happen with Iraq. Where the economic recovery is going. What's happening to corporate earnings. And we have had no positive news on those three fronts." The proof is in the numbers over the third quarter, even before further falls on Monday. The FTSE 100 has fallen by about 16 percent and the CAC 40 in Paris has lost nearly a quarter of its value. But the biggest loser -- and one of the worst performing markets anywhere in the world -- is Frankfurt's Xetra Dax, which has fallen by more than a third in the last three months alone. "The Dax is an index of 30 stocks and in periods of high volatility smaller indices become much harder to diversify. Also the Dax is heavily biased towards sectors like technology and insurance and those are the sectors that have been most heavily hit over the last nine months," said Michael O'Sullivan at Commerzbank Securities. And there seems to be little optimism for the corporate world to cheer up investors in the fourth quarter. U.S. software giant Oracle doesn't see a turnaround in key barometers until next year. "After a couple of years, usually there is a turnaround. So, I think the key will be economic recovery and then capital spending follows that," said Jeff Henly, chief financial officer of Oracle. Next year, he said, "we will start to see at least stabilisation and then a very slow beginnings of a turnaround. But we don't know for sure." And that makes things worse as months and quarter come to a close. Fund managers are expected to drop poor performers to help prop up their results.
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