[dwb]

I would think it is mostly a reaction to Marks & Spenser's poor trading report for Q3. This indicates that consumer buying is slowing down. Any company associated with retailing, either as final seller or producer will have been marked down at the start of trading whilst the dealers waited to see what happened next. A more interesting statistic would be how many shares were actually traded today. If it was higher than average then there definitely some poor sentiment. If not then it was just a reaction which will work itself out over time.

David