SYDNEY -- Investors across Asia stared in disbelief and counted the cost to their pensions and savings as stock tickers showed markets tumbling on Tuesday on fears that a recession in the United States would rock the rest of the world.

"I just feel sick, very sick," said retired IT manager Peter Hurst, 61, from Melbourne, who relies on investment income as well as his pension.

The market meltdown across Asia, following big losses in Europe on Monday and signals in the futures market that New York would see a sharp sell-off when it reopens, wiped billions of dollars off the value of companies and triggered panic selling among small investors, many of whom had bought only recently in the hope that markets had bottomed out.

"Most of your gains you make in a year, you lose in one day. If you're caught in the market, you lose your pants. Now, cash is king," said Robin Lim, 43, a seafood trader in Singapore.

Stock markets in Asia tumbled 4.0-8.0 percent on Tuesday, with India crashing more than 12 percent and Australia suffering its biggest one-day fall ever.

Frenzied trading by worried investors caused Australian online broker Commonwealth Securities' Web site to seize up, while the South Korean exchange suspended automated trading and India's market was suspended for a while after the sharp falls.

Even old hands of the financial industry were floundering.

"It's like a funeral in here," said Ken Masuda, senior equities dealer at Shinko Securities in Tokyo. "No one knows what's going to happen tonight in New York. It's like we've gone blind, you don't know what's coming ... all we can do is sell."

"DEADLY MARKET"

Waves of bad news have battered world markets since the US subprime mortgage crisis erupted last year, and its effects have spread into the real economy, hitting companies and investors. Billionaire investor George Soros told an Austrian newspaper the world was now facing its worst financial crisis since World War Two.

"This market is deadly -- you'd better stay out of it," said retired sales manager Peter Chan, 64, who sat with other stock punters at a brokerage in bustling downtown Hong Kong.

"I'm a pensioner and I can't afford huge losses," Chan added, as the subdued investors whispered anxiously and prodded at keyboards in the hunt for stock quotes.

As the benchmark Hang Seng index broke below 22,000 points, the punters began frantically conferring with each other.

"I lost quite a bit of money," said Shoba Moorjani, a woman in her 30s who came to Hong Kong just a year ago hoping to make a killing through stock investments.

Across the South China Sea, in a Taipei trading room of Fubon Securities, a couple of dozen glum-faced investors stared at a large screen on the wall awash in green -- the local color code for stock losses.

Across town, a woman surnamed Lin at a branch of E.Sun Securities said she had lost more than 50,000 Taiwan dollars ($1,500) in just two hours of trading as the main TAIEX index slid more than 5.0 percent.

"Every time the market plunges, it should be a great buying opportunity," she said. "But I just don't have enough money now."

Others also tried to put a brave face on the market rout.

"Definitely, I'm nervous and it's a bit concerning for a retiree like me. But I think the market will bounce back," said 59-year-old Sydney retiree David Lindeman. Additional reporting by Alison Leung in Hong Kong, Baker Li in Taipei, Baizhen Chua in Singapore and Victoria Thieberger in Melbourne; editing by Jonathan Standing & Ian Geoghegan

($1=A$1.17)