IT LOOKS like free-fall for regional stock markets, after Wall Street's spectacular crash last night.
As I write, the local market has traded for 30 minutes, with battered blue-chips such as DBS Group Holdings hitting levels last seen in 2004.
Even extreme bears have been taken aback by the scale of the destruction. I have run out of superlatives to describe the swift downward spiral in our financial markets.
The latest selldown came just after the United States lifted a temporary ban on short-selling of financial stocks.
Even with the ban in force over the past three weeks, US banks had fallen 25 per cent. The pressure can only escalate, now that the curbs have been lifted.
The STI, which broke 2,800 support only in mid-August, is now trying desperately to hold above the 1,950 level.
Our local market has lost 30 per cent in value in just under two months. This slide, however, seems leisurely, compared with Wall Street's 20 per cent plunge in the past week.
In many ways, this is akin to giving the global financial system the cold turkey treatment to cleanse the excesses accumulated in the years of greed.
I am not sure how all this will end.
Western economies have reached a point where the usual balm-relieving measures such as interest rates cut and government bailouts don't seem to work anymore.
Speculators are shaking the international financial markets so hard that only the fittest will survive.