Manic Market Volatility: Dave's Daily

A Bronx cheer was given to Bernanke's speech and Obama's subsequent presentation Thursday. It doesn't help a credible terror alert was issued for NYC and DC as 9/11 is remembered. But most of the blame for selling continues to be focused on Europe where many single country markets are in official bear markets. The much watched DJIA finished its sixth straight triple digit point move. Of the past five trading sessions, four have been losers.

Most economic woes are centered in developed countries from Japan, Europe and the U.S. And the epicenter is the debt crisis. In Europe, band-aid fixes and outright BS dominates authorities struggling to deal with things. They're losing their credibility. They haven't come clean overall with the scope and immediacy of these problems. Until they do these bearish conditions will continue.

The bottom line is global markets are paying the price for micro-managed and centrally planned economies. In normal conditions, we'd just clear out the problems and rebuild from an admittedly lower point. But authorities in a politically-driven environment just can't stop themselves from interfering and making conditions worse.

With these circumstances stocks sold-off sharply, the dollar rallied as the euro fell, gold retreated modestly, oil sold-off and bonds were well bid. We're flirting with another bear market in the U.S. making for three such events in just over a decade (dot.com, Financial Crisis Part I and now Financial Crisis Part II). Nothing like this has occurred since the Great Depression.

I debated whether to post a commentary yesterday and concluded to wait for the end-of-week action. From this view at least, that was the right decision.

Volume was higher Thursday with the sell-off and was topped substantially on Friday. Breadth per the WSJ was quite negative.

According to our friend and fellow subscriber David Hurwitz we had a 90% down day:

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