HEXUS.sharewatch: AMD leads fallers in another bad week for stocks

The spectre of a double-dip recession remained foremost in investors' minds as Western stock markets fell to their lowest levels since last autumn.

The FTSE 100 ended the week below 5,000 and the Dow ended below 10,000. This is the first time the two indexes have spent a significant period below those psychological thresholds since last September and November, respectively.

The biggest drag on stocks seems to be gloomy data coming from the States. The Telegraph reports one of the sharpest ever jumps in US unemployment in June and has the following comments from former US labour secretary Robert Reich: "The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing."

"Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing."

Conversely, the WSJ's tech stock watcher reckons the plunge in technology share prices must have generated some bargains. Last week AMD suffered an 11.4 percent fall, while many other tech stocks underperformed even this bearish market. Bizarrely, the only company to buck that trend was Nokia, in spite of its continued loss of mobile phone market share.