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FINANCIAL CRISIS

Stockholm exchange down sharply

After approximately five minutes of trading on the Stockholm stock exchange on Friday, the OMXS index had fallen 8.2 percent.

Stockholm exchange down sharply

The dismal start in Stockholm reflected similar developments in markets across Europe.

Shares in every industry have fallen precipitously. Telecom operator Telia Sonera is down 8 percent, while Ericsson is off 7 percent.

Friday’s drop means that the OMXS index has fallen by more than 20 percent in a week and close to 30 percent in the past month.

“This is a stock market crash,” said Peter Malmqvist, an independent stock analyst, to the TT news agency.

“If I compare the developments of the past few months to different averages, I can say that it’s just as steep and dramatic a fall as the autumn of 2002, just ahead of the war in Iraq.”

Malmqvist also drew parallels between the recent fall in share prices and those experienced during the banking crisis of the early 1990s.

The current crisis shares a similarly dire view toward future economic developments as the Swedish banking crisis and the IT crash, he said.

Everyone is asking themselves what it will take to turn things around.

“It feels the same way now. Who wants to buy stocks on a day like today? But somewhere there is someone who is, usually companies themselves who buy back their own stock. And then things can just shift, in some way.”

FINANCE

Stockholm stock exchange suffers worst day of 2018

The Stockholm stock exchange plunged by 2.8 percent on Thursday, making it the worst trading day of 2018.

Stockholm stock exchange suffers worst day of 2018
File photo: Stina Stjernkvist/TT
Stock markets across Europe suffered for the third day in a row as the arrest of a top Huawei executive in Canada has raised the spectre of an all-out trade war between the US and China.
 
For the Stockholm Stock Exchange, it meant a blood-red trading day that ended as the worst of the year thus far. The OMXS Stockholm 30 index fell by a combined 2.8 percent.
 
The majority of the companies on the index lost value, with the exception of Ericsson, which seemed to benefit from the news about its Chinese competitor Huawei with a 1.8 percent increase. Airline SAS also saw its stock increase, rising 4.2 percent thanks to sharp declines in oil prices. 
 
Among Thursday’s biggest losers was the mining company Boliden, which suffered a 6.1 percent drop. The stock of the Stockholm-based tech company Hexagon fell 5.6 percent.
 
Meanwhile, the stock of Swedish auto safety equipment manufactor Autoliv fell 6.1 percent on the news that it expects to pay some 1.8 billion kronor in fines as a result of an European Commission investigation into anti-competitive behavior in the EU. 
 
Stockholm was far the only European bourse to have a gloomy Thursday. The CAC index in Paris fell 3.3 percent, the DAX index in Frankfurt dropped 3.5 percent and the London Stock Exchange's FTSE index decreased by 3.2 percent.
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