Shares in London closed a bumpy session deep in negative territory, taking their cue from steep early falls on Wall Street, with players scurrying for cover ahead of the US Federal Reserve's decision on US interest rates later this evening.
It was also a bad day at the office for the Irish Stock Exchange which had shed 86.10 points to sit at 3923.90 by 3.30 p.m.
In London at the close, the FTSE Small Cap index was down 12.5 points at 1846.0, just shy of its 1845.5 low of the day. Losses in blue chip issues were even more extreme, with the FTSE 100 index plummeting to lows not seen since 1996.
Leading the rout on the small-cap index today was QA, which lost half its value after warning that trading in the third quarter has been more difficult than expected.
The IT training and consulting services group closed down 9-1/4 pence to 9-1/4 despite its insistence that second-half operating losses would decrease to £0.5 million from a loss of £2.3 million in the first half.
In the US the broad market fell in late morning trading as heated talk of a second Gulf War and apprehension over the US economy overrode a smaller-than-forecast drop in consumer confidence in September.
Technology stocks wobbled near the unchanged mark as chip stocks like Intel bounced a day after a sell-off that pushed the Nasdaq below 1,200 for the first time since September 1996.
The market got a fleeting boost from a report showing consumer confidence fell for the fourth straight month in September but landed higher than expectations. But the spot of bright news did not dispel deep-seated concerns over the war and economy that have driven the market to four straight weeks of declines.