Alderon Iron Ore Corp. (AXXDF)

[LGL8054]

CHINA..........................
Unable to sell shares to cover margin calls, investors there went to work selling everything else that wasn’t nailed down. Bloomberg noted that assets as diverse as copper, iron ore, eggs and soybeans plunged so far that they were halted by the Chinese futures exchange.

Selling also spilled out all over Asia – with Japan losing more than 3% and Hong Kong tanking almost 6%. That was the worst one-day rout since November 2008, the depths of the credit crisis.

We’ve now seen more than $4 trillion in Chinese wealth go up in smoke. Authorities are trying a little bit of everything in response to stem the declines. The People’s Bank of China is indirectly lending money to investment firms to buy shares. A group of 21 securities firms banded together to say they would buy stocks and tuck them away.

Initial Public Offerings have also been suspended to prevent more supply of stock from hitting the markets. Major media outlets are publishing pieces about the wisdom of buying stock rather than panicking. A $19 billion market stabilization fund was announced.

But none of it seems to have done much good so far. Indeed, policymakers there are reportedly already referring to July 3 as “Beijing’s Black Friday” due to the heavy losses suffered on that date. Individual investors — who opened thousands of brokerage accounts and used borrowed money to buy rapidly rising shares late in the game — are getting hit particularly hard.