rock climb
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The Dow was down as much as 175 points today.  Then it made an unbelievable comeback after some rumors flew out of Europe.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
First the scoreboard:

Dow: 12,602, -24.7, -0.2%

S&P 500: 1,329, -2.8, -0.2%

NASDAQ: 2,849, -25.8, -0.9%

And now the top stories:
  • Stocks were selling off ahead of the Supreme Court's ruling.  The big laggards were the big banks.  Earlier this morning, The New York Times reported that JP Morgan's initially estimated $2 billion disaster trading loss had actually ballooned to $9 billion.  Politico's Morning Money Ben noted that the timing couldn't have been better for JP Morgan considering the expected announcement on Obamacare.  Nevertheless, JP Morgan led the bank stocks lower.  It didn't help that Citi analyst Keith Horowitz downgraded the entire investment banking sector.

  • Confusion ensued as conflicting headlines crossed about the Supreme Court's ruling.  But the bottom line is that the court voted 5-4 to uphold the most of the Act, "with the exception of a provision regarding the federal government's power to control state Medicaid funds," wrote Business Insider's Grace Wyler.

  • There were winners and losers in the healthcare sector today.  Hospital operators like Tenet Healthcare and diagnostics companies like LabCorp rallied.  The basic idea is that these companies will benefit from increased volume.

  • Losers today included health insurers like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.  The basic idea is that their costs will likely go up as they make changes for Obamacare and take on risks that they normally would've passed on.

  • Markets staged a huge comeback during the last few minutes of trading.  News crossed that German Chancellor Angela Merkel cancelled an EU Summit press conference.  No one knows exactly what that means.  But the rumor is that Germany may have become more open to the idea of adopting eurobonds as a way of addressing the eurozone debt crisis. 

  • Two key pieces of economic data managed to fly under the radar.  Initial jobless claims declined to 386k, which was basically in line with economists expectation of 385k. The final read on Q1 GDP showed 1.9 percent growth, which was also right in line with expectations.

  • BlackBerry maker Research In Motion announces quarterly earnings after the closing bell.  Follow the announcement LIVE on Business Insider.