Business - FT.com

Even as another embattled British builder, Bovis, pleads for greater intervention to support the UK mortgage market, where new loan approvals are down 65 per cent versus a year ago, the European Central Bank is looking nervously at the support it has provided the sector.

Demand for dollar funding remained high among banks in Europe and eased slightly in the US, according to auction results released on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

The US corporate bond market has hit a new milestone as the credit crunch spreads the pain across the economy.

German industry is the engine of Europe's economy, and it is sputtering.

Does the credit crunch spell an end to the role of New York and London as bankers to the world?

The credit crunch is entering a second, "post-subprime" phase where banks' loan books deteriorate more rapidly and capital-raising efforts might become harder, says Scott Bugie, credit analyst at Standard & Poor's.

In an article in this column last November, I argued that a strengthening dollar would be a major story in 2008. The three reasons for the expected turnaround were: a declining deficit in the current account of the balance of payments; the dollar's undervalued status; and the possibility of a coordinated intervention by the major governments, led by the United States.

The closure of Hong Kong's financial markets on Friday in the face of of Typhoon Nuri meant the territory's traders were excused from battling against 120km per hour winds to reach their desks.

Such is the overwhelming mood of pessimism in the retail sector that even positive news on official sales figures or predatory stakebuilding are dismissed as blips, distractions and lies.

Concerns about hedge funds tend to centre on the pressure they place on the wider market.

Six months ago, the auction-rate securities market collapsed, providing $330bn worth of evidence that the turmoil in the credit markets would have a significant effect on the ability to raise money.

The summer phony war for the US presidency is about to end. What do markets tell us about the race for the White House?

Recent negativity surrounding the outlook for the platinum price might have been overdone, argues Leon Esterhuizen, analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

More UK fund managers, it seems, think their home market is cheap than at any time since the dark days of 2003. And despite that, they are sitting on record levels of cash. Or so the latest Merrill Lynch fund manager survey tells us.

In Othello, Iago tells Roderigo: "How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?" Impatience is often the undoing of Shakespeare's characters, and the same applies to investors in contemporary financial markets. The credit crunch has been under way for more than a year, recession has been in the air if not in the data for what seems like an eternity, and it is tempting to see risk assets as cheap or oversold.

Investors are switching out of emerging market equity funds because of the sell-off in commodities and rising interest rates in many of these economies.

Copper prices have sunk to a six-month low, retreating almost 20 per cent to $7,150 a tonne on Tuesday, since hitting a record high of $8,930 a tonne in early July, as the red metal suffers a severe case of summertime blues.

The deflationists have it. All year long, the debate has raged over whether the world faces a greater risk from resurgent inflation or from a deflation to match Japan in the 1990s. The sudden fall in commodity prices has, for now, convinced the market that we need not worry about inflation.

The South African rand has been volatile recently but the currency's fundamentals remain negative, believes Jean-François Mercier, economist at Citigroup (NYSE:C).

Corn, wheat and soyabean prices have fallen heavily in the past six weeks, caught up in the broad sell-off that has engulfed commodity markets this summer.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Shakespeare said, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. A tide in world markets that had lasted since 2000 seems to have reached its flood. Now it appears to be retreating, taking with it many assumptions.

From next week, a new era in stock trading opens when one of Europe's stock ex­changes takes the first plunge into "dark pools".

The protests and squeals of pain from the global securities industry over talk of changing credit ratings scales for complex debt products have probably turned into slack-jawed silence in the wake of "Corrigan III".

UBS (NYSE:UBS) has cut its short-term forecast for gold by 15 per cent to $850 an ounce following the recent slide in the oil price.

The commodities market stole the Federal Reserve's thunder on Tuesday - and nobody at the central bank will complain.

The slick from the sudden fall in oil prices is spreading. Cheaper oil is good for the economy but investors face a risk of accidents as traders retreat from the expectation that the oil price would continue rising.

A bubble has burst on the world's stock exchanges, and barely anyone seems to have noticed. That is strange, because the bubble was in the shares of the exchanges themselves.

Wall Street stocks fell for a second session on Friday, and trimmed already modest weekly gains, as investors wrestled with downbeat jobs data, poor results from General Motors (NYSE:GM) and a bump in the price of oil.