In a week that saw Lord Hutton recommend sweeping changes to public sector pensions (read more), the Bank of England maintain base rates at 0.5% for another month (read more), the crisis in Libya deepen (and spread to Saudi Arabia) and the devastating earthquake and  tsunami in Japan (and Pacific) stocks have been volatile to say the least.

The FTSE All Share index, representing the performance of all 624 eligible companies listed on the London Stock Exchange has finished the week at 3,026.24 a fall of 11.15 on the day and a drop of 83.01 points compared to its opening value of 3,109.25 on Monday. That’s a drop of 2.67% over the week.

So far this year the FTSE All Share index, which accounts for approximately 98% of the UK’s market capitalisation, has gone down 36.61 from its’ opening price of 3062.85 at the start of trading on 4^th January 2011.

Let’s hope the news from Japan (and coastline of the Pacific Ocean) is not going to be as bad as the footage suggests.