Off the lows is where the market resides after a swift morning pull back. Correction? No.. just a pull back, one that has prices back to the lows of two weeks past.
The VIX is 13% higher, a large move, but in the context of recent action still nothing to write home about.
Greece, China, CPI there is plenty of blame to place in the headlines for today's pull back. For now it's just a pull back and these pull backs get bought. Support on S&P 500 Futures held for now.
U.S. stocks tanked on Friday as a confluence of intensifying Greek default fears and a new stock-market regulation from China put investors on edge.
Recent gains in European equity markets and high valuations of U.S. stock indexes also made them vulnerable to a pullback, according to some analysts.
Donald Ellenberger, senior portfolio manager at Federated Investors, said concerns over Greece and its ability to pay its debt are behind the selloff in risky assets such as equities.
“Investors have piled into German bunds and credit spreads widened. But it was news from China’s regulators that triggered selling, as a lot of investors were sitting on gains after a run-up in equity markets,” Ellenberger said.
Early morning jitters in China also helped stoke worries.
China’s securities regulator tightened rules on margin lending while the country’s two stock exchanges said they would make it easier to bet that stocks will fall in price in an effort to temper the country’s soaring stock markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.37% shed more than 270 points, or 1.5%, to 17,832, and the S&P 500 index SPX, -1.01% lost 24 points, or 1.2%, to 2,080, while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.42% was down 75 points, or 1.5%, to 4,931.
Friday’s slump followed similarly bleak action in stock-index futures before the markets officially opened.
“What we’re seeing right now is a combination of panic and technical levels being wiped out and exacerbating the move lower,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst OANDA, noting a 6%-10% correction appears to be on the cards.
Also affecting global markets was an outage of Bloomberg terminals. Traders’ access to the terminals went down around the same time Asian markets closed at about 3:15 a.m. Eastern Time. The company says it is working to restore access to the Bloomberg Professional service, the company’s key product. Read: Bloomberg Terminal goes down, traders get up to fun
In economic news, consumer prices rose for the second straight month in March, led by higher gasoline prices, according to data reported Friday by the Labor Department. The uptick was mostly in line with expectations.