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As stock markets around the world plunged on another day of choppy, volatile trading, U.S. stock futures were pointing towards a slightly higher open.

Dow Jones stock futures rose 0.6 per cent, or 64 points, while S&P 500 futures were 0.8 per cent higher after dropping as much as 3.2 per cent in earlier trading and then snapping back.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng dived almost 6 per cent, while Germany's DAX sank 3.6 per cent. Losses on other markets were smaller, with Britain's FTSE 100 losing 2 per cent, France's CAC 40 slipping 1.5 per cent, and Japan's Nikkei sliding 1.7 per cent. Australia's S&P ASX/200 index, which had earlier fallen 5.5 per cent, closed 1.2 per cent higher.

The MSCI All-Country World Index was down for the 10th day in a row, having lost 20 per cent since early May. It was Day Eight of losses for European stocks, the longest losing streak since 2003. (The FTSE Eurofirst had actually opened trading with gains.) The CBOE SPX Volatility Index, also known as the VIX, spiked 50 per cent to 48.

Crude oil futures lost 2.8 per cent, trading around $79 (U.S.) a barrel, while gold shot 3.5 per cent higher to another record, of $1,772.60 an ounce, in its biggest three-day rally since late 2008.

The Canadian dollar, which dipped below parity to the U.S. dollar in early trading, regained some ground, trading at $1.0056 (U.S.).

And U.S. Treasuries, which were the ones that were supposed to be affected by Standard & Poor's credit rating downgrade? Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields, which fell past their lows of 2010 on Monday to 2.31 per cent, rose slightly to 2.34 per cent.

All this before the U.S. Federal Reserve meets to talk about the economy. The Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog headlined its premarket report: Where have you gone, Ben Bernanke? The Financial Times' Alphaville blog suggested that the Fed repeat its Operation Twist, which ran from 1961 to 1965, in which it bought long-term bonds and sold short-term bills in an attempt to flatten the yield curve to boost confidence.

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