Several Australians watching the stock market at Sydney's Exchange Square yesterday expressed their resentment for Wall Street, but had expected the All Ordinaries to dive a lot further than it did.
The All Ordinaries Index slid 4.3 per cent or 208 points to close at 4631 points in trading yesterday, after opening just slightly higher at 4635 points.
Comparatively, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged a record 777 points or 7 per cent to 10365, while the S&P 500 tumbled 106 points or 8.8 per cent to 1106.
"I thought [the All Ordinaries] could have opened a lot worse, I think it may go down to 4200 [eventually] and then maybe I could be brave enough to buy in," an unidentified retiree investor said.
"I'm about 40 per cent in cash, so I do not know whether I will be brave enough. I live off investments, it's 100 per cent of my income."
She was bitter at Wall Street and said: "This is just a rerun of what happened in the 1980s, just greed, absolute greed."
Nearly 40 per cent of Australian investors had expected shares to perform worse than they did even before the markets shed billions yesterday, according to the latest CoreData Investor Sentiment Index.
University student Laila Yamout and her unnamed uncle said they had sold their stocks, and have held only cash for over a year.
"[There is] $560 trillion in derivatives and options and people did not see this disaster coming? Are people gamblers?" her uncle said.
On the US, Yamout said: "It is starting to become hell. God help the people, the credit crisis and the foreclosures, god help the people."
IT worker Mandar Thosar, who invests in Indian stocks and wants to buy Australian shares, said all his gains were wiped out.
"Four or five months ago [my investments] were double. I believe all this fallout is going to effect Australian banks, I fear that a few banks [here] could go bankrupt," he said.
Thosar said Wall Street executives became too greedy and the country's regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, had failed.
