Alongside India, other Asian stock markets also trimmed their initial losses in afternoon trade, after having gone into a dizzying tailspin earlier in the day. So South Korea's Kospi index, which had crashed 10 percent in the morning, was later down a much more modest 3.6 per cent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index, which had earlier tumbled 7 per cent, was later down 2.9 per cent, and Japan's Nikkei 225 index was down 1.7 per cent. A key Australian stock index had even managed to move into positive territory. Overnight, in the US, however, Wall Street had gone into free-fall on the first day of trading after Standard & Poor's downgrade of the US credit rating. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had tanked 5.5 per cent–for its sixth worst decline in the last 112 years–the Nasdaq Composite had plunged almost 7 per cent, and the Standard & Poor's 500 had plummeted 6.7 per cent.