World stocks fall amid stimulus withdrawal jitters

SEOUL, South Korea – World stock markets fell Thursday amid a big drop in oil prices and as investors worried that support measures for the fragile global economy will be withdrawn too quickly.
The declines came after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged at a regular meeting Wednesday, as widely expected, and said the pace of economic activity has "picked up" since its last meeting in August.
But the Fed also said it would again slow some of its purchases of mortgage-backed securities, which have been part of the extraordinary support the central bank has given the U.S. economy over the past year.

Stock market

A stock market is a public market for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.
The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion US at the beginning of October 2008. [1] The total world derivatives market has been estimated at about $791 trillion face or nominal value, [2] 11 times the size of the entire world economy. [3] The value of the derivatives market, because it is stated in terms of notional values, cannot be directly compared to a stock or a fixed income security, which traditionally refers to an actual value. Moreover, the vast majority of derivatives 'cancel' each other out (i.e., a derivative 'bet' on an event occurring is offset by a comparable derivative 'bet' on the event not occurring.). Many such relatively illiquid securities are valued as marked to model, rather than an actual market price.
The stocks are listed and traded on stock exchanges which are entities of a corporation or mutual organization specialized in the business of bringing buyers and sellers of the organizations to a listing of stocks and securities together. The stock market in the United States includes the trading of all securities listed on the NYSE Euronext, the NASDAQ, the Amex, as well as on the many regional exchanges, e.g. OTCBB and Pink Sheets. European examples of stock exchanges include the London Stock Exchange, th

Rangebound Sensex ends flat

The Sensex opened on a silent note at 17,186, tracking weak global cues. The index thereafter gyrated between zones amid alternate bouts of buying and selling. The BSE benchmark index touched a high of 17,195, and a low of 17,060.
The Sensex finally ended flat at 17,134, up eight points.
The NSE Nifty ended flat at 5,083 points.
Among the sectoral gainers, TECk and IT indices were the maximum gainers, up over1% each. On the other hand the healthcare index slipped 1% to 4,347.
The market breadth was negative, out of 2,868 shares traded, 1,663 declined and 1,123 advanced on the BSE.