Fear steers Wall Street in rough week

NEW YORK, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- A tsunami of fear has gripped Wall Street in recent days, analysts said, pushing understandable decision-making into improbable stampede behavior.

"It's like having a fire in a cinema," Princeton economics professor Hyun Song Shin told The New York Times. "You are rushing to the door because everyone is rushing to the door."

"Clearly, as a collective action, it is a disaster," Shin said.

Investor fears have prompted a mass movement to commodities and U.S. Treasury bills, considered safe havens. In response, oil, grain and gold prices have soared and investors bought three-month Treasury bills with "virtually no yield," the Times reported.

The withdrawal from stocks wiped out 8.48 percent of the Dow Jones industrial average's value in two day's of trading this week.

Some analysts worry the collective pull from stocks could leave some companies short of operating capital.

"The economy depends on credit to finance homes, automobiles, student loans, and inventories," G. David MacEwen, chief investment officer for the bond department of American Century Investments, told the Times.