Four at Four: The Vortex of Selling

(Wall St Journal-MarketBeat Blog) The two-day respite has ended. After a soaring rally to open the week and a middling Tuesday that at least didn’t turn into a rout, the markets barfed out another horrific session Wednesday, culminating in another one of those late-day swoons that left major indexes not far from their closing levels Friday. The selling was wide and deep, as the brief euphoria in the banking sector was washed down the drain with a 10.7% decline in the Financial Select Sector SPDRs fund, which tracks the S&P 500’s financial sector. Heavy losses were sustained by technology, small-cap stocks, transports, and cyclicals — pretty much everybody on a day when the S&P lost 9% of its value, much of it, again, coming in the final hour.

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