After an unsteady but unspectacular start on Monday morning, the Dow Jones index began a dipping run in the late afternoon that saw it lose 450 points in two hours, including 250 points in just half an hour before close. Millions of investors found themselves poorer in the evening than at lunch time as the fall cleaned out 6.37 per cent from the index.

Many wondered if this was the end of the American economic honeymoon, a journey that had carried the Dow to a record of 9337.97 on July 17 when the manna of the 10,000 mark seemed imminent.

Instead, in six weeks of sustained selling since then, the slide has left share prices 19 per cent belowtheir peak, vapourising more than $ 2.3 trillion in paper profits. In the last three trading sessions alone, the Dow has been shaved of a whopping 1100 points, wiping out allinvestor gains during the current year.