The markets sold off sharply today thanks to a slew of news from around the world including political drama in Italy, ongoing trade talks with China, as well as economic crisis in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. The Dow 30 was lower by 391, the S&P 500 sold off 31, and the Nasdaq 100 closed lower on the day by 37.
The financials were the big focus today. Concerns about global credit issues hitting the holders of that credit caused JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) to fall over 4% leading the Dow as the biggest loser. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) wasn't far behind with a loss of 3.5%. The financial sector ETF (NYSE: XLF) which is heavily weighted in the large, global banks sold off 3.3%, breaking below the 200 day moving average once again. Even the regional banks (NYSE: KRE) which have no exposure globally, sold off on the day.
Interest rates continued to fall on the fear of a market selloff as investors ran to safe haven bonds. The rate on the much talked about 10-year bond fell to 2.78% today, continuing it's slide from 3.13% highs set last week.
Oil sold off hard again today on news that Saudi Arabia and Russia may raise output. The price of crude oil sold off to the technical support level that many traders were eying. Prices slowed their decent at the $66 level for the day.
In other news, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) shares were lower on the day as the company will close 8000 stores today at 2pm for "racial bias training." Hormel (NYSE: HRL) shares pushed to highs despite a recall on 228,000 pounds of Spam due to customers finding metal objects in the food.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) was also in the news as a report from South Korea says that the company is planning to use "High-end technology in the screens of all it's new 2019 iPhone models." Shares were slightly lower on the day.