A scorecard for markets on a dismal day

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Avert your eyes if your heart is weak. Otherwise, here’s your end-of-day markets scorecard:

--- Amid a massive sell-off, the Dow Jones industrials sank 449.36 points, or 4.1%, to 10,609.66, the lowest close since November 2005. The only bit of good news in the Dow’s plunge: The blue-chip index held up a little better than most broader indexes. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 4.7%, the Nasdaq composite dived 4.9% and the Russell 2,000 small-stock index gave up 4.8%. Just 215 stocks rose on the New York Stock Exchange while 2,995 fell.

--- For the major indexes, losses in this bear market now have passed the 25% mark. The Dow is down 25.1% from its record closing high of 14,164 reached last October. Measured from their respective 2007 peaks, the S&P 500 is down 26.1% and the Nasdaq is down 26.6%.

In a twist that has many analysts baffled, smaller stocks have shown remarkable resilience in this bear market. The Russell 2,000 is off 21% from its 2007 peak. How long can that last?

--- Banks, money market funds and other big investors, desperate to boost their liquidity as the credit crunch worsened, snatched up every three-month Treasury bill they could find. The result was the paltriest annualized yield on those T-bills since World War II: a mere 0.06%, down from 0.70% on Tuesday.

At one point the yield on the 3-month T-bill was negative -- meaning that investors were willing to accept a small loss on the security just to get it into their portfolio. Negative yields haven’t occurred since the Great Depression.

The six-month T-bill yield also dived, to 0.82% from 1.48% on Tuesday.

But the appetite wasn’t nearly as strong for longer-term Treasuries. The yield on the two-year T-note slipped to 1.64% from 1.81%. And the 10-year T-note, a benchmark for mortgage rates, eased just to 3.42% from 3.44%.

--- The dollar lost ground, suggesting that in this deepening crisis global investors no longer are looking at the greenback as a haven, as they were in August. That’s a disturbing sign for the U.S. because we still are in dire need of foreign capital to fund our economy.

The euro rose to $1.433 from $1.416 on Tuesday. The British pound jumped to $1.817 from $1.786.

--- European stock markets were holding up reasonably well today -- until Wall Street opened. Most major European indexes finished the day down between 2% and 2.5%. Some Asian markets, including Japan and South Korea, had rallied overnight. But Thursday is likely to be another bloodbath overseas after Wall Street’s plunge.

As for emerging markets -- look here.

--- Gold and silver were the day’s big winners as hard assets trumped paper for the moment. Near-term gold futures in New York had their biggest one-day gain ever in dollars, soaring $70.10, or 9%, to $846.60 an ounce, the highest close since Aug. 8.

Lowly silver was even hotter: Silver futures -- which had hit a 52-week low of $10.46 an ounce on Tuesday -- rocketed $1.16, or 11.1%, to $11.62.