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A surge in mortgage defaults among U.S. home buyers disrupted money markets around the globe. As the chart shows, U.S. home prices (in pink) fell 7.6 percent between June and September. Meanwhile, the ABX, a widely followed index (in blue) which tracks securities backed by subprime mortgage debt has lost 75 percent of its value this year.

Dan Burns is Editor in Charge of U.S. markets.

The dollar has moved in one direction for most of this year: Down. Investors have been relentlessly bearish with the U.S. sporting near-record trade and budget deficits. The euro hit a record high against the dollar.

You can get a sense of the subprime lending crisis from red-shaded area, showing delinquency rates on home loans spiking to a 14-year high. This is the result of overstretched borrowers behind on payments. Many of those bad loans are bundled into mortgage-backed bonds that have plummeted in value. The upshot? Since hitting a record in May, just before the real trouble began, financial stocks have cratered, as the plunging blue line shows.

The credit scare has sent investors scurrying for the safety of U.S. government bonds. As a result, U.S. Treasuries are on pace to top the performance of stocks for the first time in five years. The blue line on the chart shows how Treasuries have taken off since summer. The red line tracks the rollercoaster ride for stocks.

When the "four horsemen of the Nasdaq" first entered the investor lexicon in the tech boom of the 1990s, it referred to the market dynamos of the day: Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Dell. Tech made a huge comeback in 2007, but the horses have changed riders. This year, it's Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Amazon.com. The four have brought investors $200 billion in new wealth so far, accounting for roughly 40 percent of the increase in the value of the Nasdaq.