Courtesy of John Nyaradi.
Courtesy of Phil Davis, Phil’s Stock World
Once again in the Third World state of New Jersey, I have no web service.
I’ll write about how shabby our infrastructure is another time but boy do I feel bad for the tens of thousands of businesses that have been shut down for 4 days (and counting) without internet, phones or power in some cases – because it snowed. It seems that, for the past 120 years, it hasn’t been in anyone’s budget to dig a hole in the ground and bury our utility lines so we are left at the constant mercy of the elements – even as having access to these services becomes more and more vital to our nation’s productivity.
Fortunately, I can fold my business up and head off to a hotel. I’m in the lovely lobby of the Glen Point Marriott this morning in a big comfy chair next to a waterfall so I can’t complain too much. People who were hoping yesterday was a small correction, on the other hand, have plenty to complain about as the Futures are falling fast on word that Greece may be telling the EU where to stick their bailout (and their Draconian austerity measures).
The Dollar came screaming back this morning – all the way to 77.50 (up 1.5%) and that was enough to send our futures down 2% on the tail of what is currently (8am) a 5% drop in the DAX along with a 4% plunge in the CAC and 3.2% on the FTSE. It’s noon in Europe and they opened low and headed lower.
Over in Asia, the Shanghai was flat this morning but the Hang Seng dropped the full 2.5% and the Nikkei fell 1.7%. The action is interesting because we knew about the Greek situation at 2pm yesterday so it’s strange how the reaction to it seemed to snowball only after the pundits began spinning it as the new crisis.
Referendum or no referendum, we were expecting a re-test of our Must Hold lines on the Dow (11,590), S&P (1,235) and the Nasdaq (2,603) and the -5% lines on the NYSE (7,473) and the Russell (735) so whatever excuse it takes to get us there is fine with us. We’ll have a blow-off (hopefully) spike below them at the open but it’s where we finish that matters. We were, of course, playing for bearish follow-through today and we let…
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