Precious and Industrial Metals

Crude oil, gold, silver … are crushed. So are stocks on all the major indices around the world. Wall Street banks and players can finance their own positions needing no help from the central bank; they do require reassurance that the Fed will direct public funds — borrowed from the same banks at interest — toward them if any of their bets go wrong.

Stocks Slammed, Bond Yields Surge After Bernanke’s Taper Talk

Wall Street was a sea of red Thursday morning, on the heels of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s signal that the central bank’s asset purchase program will slow down as soon as late 2013.

Bernanke was sure to qualify his remarks at Wednesday’s press conference, comparing a tapering of asset purchases to taking his foot off the accelerator, but the initial market reaction indicates traders view the Fed chief’s remarks as a warning that the brakes are coming.

The selloff, which began in the U.S. Wednesday afternoon before racing around the world, produced heavy losses in every asset class. Equities took a beating .Japan’s Nikkei dropped nearly 2% and the major European indexes fell even further, while the S&P 500 began the day with losses worse than 1%, falling 18 points to 1,611 in the first hour of trading.

Commodities took a beating, as crude oil dropped almost 3% to $95.75 a barrel and gold prices plunged nearly 5.5% to less than $1,300 an ounce.

The dollar was one of the few assets in positive territory, rising about 1% the euro and even more than that versus the Japanese yen.

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