By Mary Gahan BBC News Online business reporter

Who would gamble on shares now?

Shares are heading for the floor but teasing us with some little rallies along the way.

War fears are growing.

Oil prices are rising.

Investors are losing money.

And they are asking if shares really can fall any further.

Welcome to another average week in the stock market business of 2003.

When the New Year dawned, markets had fallen for three years in a row.

Trading began on 2 January with London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares languishing at 3,940.

Two and a half months on that figure seems, after all, to have been dizzyingly high.

Great Depression

By 12 March London's blue-chip shares had dived a further 700 points to stand at 3,287, their lowest level for nearly eight years.

It isn't the man in the street any more, I think that's over, he's shell-shocked anyway Brian Winterflood, Chairman of Winterflood Securities Click here for more about why shares have been falling

It was the same story in France and Germany.

Shares in Paris collapsed to just a third of their value when they peaked in 2000.

And the fall in Frankfurt threatened to take on historic proportions.

For much of the day the Dax index was below the 2,200 mark.

Merrill Lynch analysts said that made the current bear market worse than that of the 1930s' Great Depression.

Time to buy?

Just when everyone was at their gloomiest the whole of Europe succumbed to one of those tantalising little rallies.

Could it mean the market had reached the bottom after all?

Or was it what is known in city jargon as a dead cat bounce - when shares rise briefly only to fall again?

Certainly there are plenty of voices crying "buy, buy" each time the markets plumb new depths.

But even if many professional investors say shares are cheap that does not mean the markets have fallen to the very bottom.

Neither does it mean that a strong, sustained increase in prices is just around the corner.

'Keep your head down'

One man who has not been taken in by the seductive rise in shares is Brian Winterflood, the chairman of Winterflood securities.

He predicts the FTSE 100 index could fall a further 700 points to bottom out at 2,500 points.

"Once it gets to that level, that might then stop it, but the climb back may take a long, long time."

Mr Winterflood has worked in the city for 50 years and remembers the downturn in 1974. But he says this is the worst bear market he has seen.

"Two years ago I thought the nearest thing to '74 was starting to happen. It's superseded that now, it's got worse.

He said Wednesday's fall was significant because it was across the whole breadth of the market.

"It isn't the man in the street any more, I think that's over, he's shell-shocked anyway.