Monday morning, with nary a hint of warning, virtually the entire universe of stocks freaked out. Monday market madness ensued.
WASHINGTON. Things looked great Monday morning on Wall Street. Stocks advanced sharply at the ringing of the opening bell. But a bit later Monday morning, with nary a hint of warning, virtually the entire universe of stocks freaked out. Monday market madness ensued. It’s as if stocks unanimously decided to take a header. And BANG! The widely followed Dow Jones Industrials were down 200,300,400 points or more in a flash.
Roughly mid-morning, ZeroHedge took a stab at why the bottom suddenly fell out of Wall Street’s latest run of irrational exuberance. But inadvertently, the Tylers may have found the answer anyway.
“No real catalyst for the sudden drop in stocks – weak construction spending hit after the drop had begun – but the surge open in futures overnight has been erased since the cash open this morning…”
Here’s the ZeroHedge chart. It’s bad enough. But the site actually posted the chart before things really got sickening.
Elsewhere, ZH acknowledged that those construction numbers, reported mid-morning, seem to have knocked the props out from underneath the bull argument.
“U. S. construction spending posted the smallest annual increase since 2011 as homebuilding slowed amid higher borrowing costs and a glut of apartments in some areas.”
CNBC added the increasingly uncertain US-China trade talks to the short laundry list of potential market downers haunting Monday’s suddenly sheepish traders, bringing all three averages into play.
“Stocks staged a marked turnaround Monday as the S&P 500 sank back below a key chart level and a trade resolution between the U. S. and China had long been expected by traders.
“The S&P 500 was down 1 percent after climbing nearly half a percent, breaking back below the key 2,800 level and on pace for its biggest drop since Jan. 22. The broad index closed above 2,800 on Friday, marking its highest close since Nov. 8.
“The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 348 points, erasing a 129.66-point gain. Boeing was one of the worst performers in the Dow, sliding 3 percent. The Nasdaq Composite traded 0.8 percent lower. Earlier in the day, it was up as much as 0.64 percent.
“‘The market on all technical levels was the most overbought we’ve been’ in a while, said Larry Benedict, founder of The Opportunistic Trader.
