diver on fire
Image: Angie Vianzon on Flickr
Low volume. Little news. But we did see a notable sell-off in stocks and the euro.
First, the scoreboard:
Dow: 12,153.4, -138.1, -1.1%
S&P 500: 1,249.7, -15.7, -1.2%
NASDAQ: 2,589.0, -35.2, -1.3%
And now, the top stories:
  • The good news out of Europe today was that an Italian short-term bond auction went very well. Specifically, the Italian government issued €9 billion of 6-month bills at a yield of 3.251%. This is down from the 6.504% yield we saw as recently as November 25.  However, all eyes will be on tomorrow's auction: €8.5 billion worth of 10-year bonds.  The 10-year yield continues to be north of 7%.

  • We also learned this morning that the European Central Bank's (ECB) overnight deposits swelled to a record high of €455 billion.  It appears banks would rather park their money at the ECB and get 0.25% than take a little more risk for a higher return.

  • Out of nowhere, the euro and the pound both plunged against the dollar.  The move was breathtaking.  Yet, it's unclear exactly what happened. Some speculate it's a cross between light volume, bullishness on the dollar, news of record ECB deposits, and perhaps even a fat-finger trade.  (Or maybe it was a drunk trader who decide to go dollar shopping.)  Although, it came off of its low, the euro continued to trade below $1.30 into the afternoon. 

  • Basic materials and financials got hit the hardest in today's broad market sell-off.  Both Bank of America and Citigroup traded down by around 3%. In the commodity space, the rare earths sector sold of sharply.  China, the world's largest producer of rare earths, said it would cut its export quota of those particular commodities. Rare earths producer Molycorp saw its shares plunge.

  • Last night, Google announced that it was adding around 625k new users to its social network Google+ per day.