HEXUS.sharewatch: Shares fall on Greece, Goldman and the Gulf

We first warned about the effect of Greece's crippling national debt on wider markets back in early February and three months later it's still an issue. One of the presumed certainties in financial markets is that countries can pay their bills, so when that doesn't turn out to be the case it tends to spook investors somewhat.

But it's not just Greece that's causing concern. Investment bank Goldman Sachs continues to be probed about alleged fraudulent deals made around the time of the global financial meltdown. It's not just the implications for Goldman itself, but the precedent being set for other banks, which were presumably no more hampered by their conscience than Goldman was.

Lastly there's BP's catastrophic oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico, which is not only going to cost BP a ton of money to sort out, but could have incalculable knock-on effects on the southern US states that stand to be affected by it. All these things are adding uncertainty to the market, which tends to make it fall.

In fact only one stock on our list - Qualcomm - didn't fall last week as investors probably thought they'd over-reacted to its cautious outlook for the rest of the year. Among the bigger fallers were AMD, which continues to lose market share to Intel, and Dell, which saw rival HP make a strong move into the smartphone with the acquisition of Palm.