Oil surge continues
Dow Jones industrials Average fluctuation chart
The Dow Jones Industrials Average has fallen by more than 100 points as oil prices keep soaring amid the credit crisis impacting the US.
Moody"s Investors Service said Saturday, it was reviewing investment bank Morgan Stanley for a possible downgrade, while Merrill Lynch reports that it might have to write off nearly USD 6b of risky mortgage-backed debt.
Oil price rises however kept apace with the price of crude rising to a new record of USD 142.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling down at USD 140.21.
A barrel of oil broke the USD 100 barrier for the first time on January 2. It averaged USD 84.70 for that month and has been on a historically unprecedented upswing ever since.
Following Thursday"s 358-point drop, The Dow further fell another 106.9 on Friday. The blue-chip index is down 19.9 percent from its record-high close of 14,164.53 in October.
The Dow was not the only stock market that closed lower. The Standard & Poor"s 500 index lost 4.77 to 1,278.38. S&P is down 18.3 percent from its October high. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 5.74, or 0.25 percent, to 2,315.63. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 0.28 to 698.14.
On a volume of 2.29 billion shares in the New York Stock Exchange, falling indices outnumbered improvements by about 3-to2.
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