European stock markets took a broadside hit this morning following the ratings cut Standard & Poors imposed on both Greece and Portugal. Spain’s leading stock index fell 3.3 percent while Portugal fell 4 percent. Meanwhile, regulators in Greece have banned short-selling to head-off speculators.
“The market is now looking at every country with a lot of curiosity,” said Gilles Moec, senior European economist at Deutsche Bank. “Portugal is clearly the most fragile country after Greece, but even so there is quite a lot of distance between [the two countries],” he told the BBC.
Source: BBC News
