By Excerpts from The Malaysian Insider:
SINGAPORE, Jan 1 — If there has ever been a year investors would like to forget, the slow motion train wreck of 2008 must surely be it.
It has been 12 months of unprecedented carnage, with the Straits Times Index (STI) plunging 50 per cent to 1,761.56 — the biggest annual fall in its 42-year history.
Massive sell-offs and fund redemptions wiped out almost S$400 billion (RM960 billion) from the combined market value of the 783 companies listed here.
The total value of shares of those firms at the market close yesterday was S$393.04 billion — less than half the S$790.3 billion on Dec 31, 2007, and the lowest since the end of 2004, where it stood at S$360.7 billion.
Much of the damage was done in October, when S$123 billion of value disappeared into thin air.