I told you it could get worse.
The last two days have been the make-you-sick-to-your-stomach type of days, as you watch the market coming apart at the seams. Hope you’ve protected yourself. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much if you’re not in.
The selloff continued right from the start today and never really looked back, with a seeming panic building in the last hour of trading. The Dow Industrials plunged 191 points (-1.9%) to 10088, the S&P 500 lost 19 points (-1.6%) to 1143 and the Nasdaq shed another 39 points (-2.0%) to 1908. The Russell 2000 lost 12 points (-2.0%) to 580, the Dow Tranports fell another 1.8%, and the Dow Utilities were down 1.9%. Bonds rallied as stocks fell, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield down to 4.24%.
Market internals were once again putrid as volume soared well past 2 billion shares on both exchanges. Advances/declines were worse than 1 to 3, and up/down volume was worse than 1 to 5 on each exchange. New highs/lows came in at a paltry 18/179 on the NYSE and 19/265 on the Nasdaq.
A few groups managed to keep their head above water today, led by biotechs (+1.6%), health care products (+1.1%) and drug stocks (+1.0%). But the rest of the numbers were big and bad. Losers were led by disk drives (-4.9%), computer hardware (-4.6%), networkers (-3.9%), semiconductors (-3.3%), natural gas stocks (-3.4%), oil stocks (-3.2%), internets (-3.1%), housing (-3.1%), steel stocks (-2.9%), chemicals (-2.6%), retailers (-2.6%) and commodities (-2.5%). That’s just the worst of them.
Crude oil prices fell to $50.49/barrel, but the market didn’t seem to care. The dollar index fell 0.5%, and gold prices moved slightly higher to $424/ounce.
Maybe this is the kind of washout we need to put an end to this slide, even if only in the short term. But you can’t even say it’s over yet - there is still no evidence of any reversal whatsoever - and some very severe damage has been done. There’s going to be a lot of work to do to try and get this mess put back together again.
I think I need a drink.
