Looking around at the market

Even as most US markets opened higher (was it over reaction or a new push for a bail out?), the news was still dominated by yesterday's news of the House blocking the bail out bill and the resulting market sell off. All of the major news providers covered the stock market drop. For instance from Business Week:

Another Black Monday for Wall Street - BusinessWeek:

"The ugliness was widespread, with major indexes posting their worst percentage declines since the 1987 stock market crash. The Dow Jones Industrial average tumbled almost 7%, the S&P 500 sank 8.8%, and the Nasdaq plunged a jaw-dropping 9.1%. The Dow suffered its largest point drop in history."

There is no way to say that the drop was not large, but also shows how large the crash of 1987 was. (The Business Week article has a in interesting figure showing largest DOW price moves.)

More overlooked were some other market moves. For instance a spike in short term borrowing.

Money markets stay locked; o/n rate soars | Reuters:

"The scramble for cash as banks sought to square their books over the end of the quarter saw the European Central Bank lend $30 billion dollars overnight at a huge rate of 11 percent -- more than five times the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target rate -- and call for bids for an additional $50 billion.

Meanwhile, the London interbank offered rate (Libor) for overnight dollars jumped by a record 430 basis points to 6.87 percent, the highest in at least 7-1/2 years."

And a jump in volatility as evidenced by the VIX jumping by about a third.


Stay tuned. Nothing about this story is done yet.