A couple of things (some of which we all know):
1) Margin calls are NOT over. Today made a slew more.
2) Stops being triggered just accelerated this. Especially with no bids!
3) There are no real circuit breakers on the NAZ (to my knowledge - but someone correct me if I am wrong). The NAZ get's its controls from the DOW, and as we all know is useless as these markets are DIVERGING of late!! So when the DOW was flying up 196 and we were starting our crash, NO CONTROLS were there to help mitigate the fall.
Only when the DOW started falling to over 200 and it's OWN circuit breakers kicked in did they also start NAZ's at the same time.
CNBC remarked that at it's low in the NAZ, the "DOW" points that it represented would have created the shutdown threshold, over 1100 "DOW" points (using 1 NAZ point = 2 DOW points). If that ratio is greater, some breakers should have kicked in sooner.
I was mildly opportunistic, but we have to tip our hat to those fundies with cash holdings to make it turn from that freefall. Certainly, the little guy didn't do this, but did help once it got started back up.
Finally, I don't think we're done yet. Many of these stocks won't see the highs they've experiences for 9-12 months, if ever. We have to take a keener eye to those that returned from the depths first. Here's what's green on my screen: AMKR, AMAT, AMCC, TQNT, EMC, KOPN, HELX, APH, INTC, MCRL.
It pains me to think that we will experience that all over again, if that retest happens.
The S&P futures are now down 4.00, but it's a long nite.
Steve |
