Did the Dow drop today because of the "officially in a recession" thing?

[Bicoastal]

Or was it some other reason?

Either way, we all know whom the Conservatives are gonna blame...

[Speck Tater]

1. I read somewhere that 70% of all big price moves

have nothing to do with any particular piece of news, and just happen because of the inherent instability of the market system.There was no significant news on the day of the 1929 crash. It just happened.

[HereSince1628]

2. "Other reason?" The performance of the Dow is way beyond reason

It is even beyond good guessing.

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. Except for the fact that

these goddamn Wall Street vampires knew damn well we were already in a recession, since they fucking caused it.

[HereSince1628]

8. promoting subprime borrowing was trying to wring blood out of a turnip

If regulators had looked critically, or if we had taken it on ourselves to look closely, we all would have realized that the ponzi scheme that was the "housing bubble" was running out of suckers and it was time to cash in.

Bulls win, bears win, hogs get SLAUGHTERED.

[JerseygirlCT]

4. Seems to drop every time Paulson opens his mouth, doesn't it? nt

[CK_John]

5. My guess is they(insiders) know about more bad news in the pipeline. n/t

[ecstatic]

6. This is why I don't like tying the DOW to Obama...good or bad

He is not responsible for what those people do!

[napi21]

7. I think it has a lot to do with the bad retail news. BF sales were strong, but

only because the price cuts were steep which means lower profit. Everyone, even those with money, have been saying they're cutting back this year.

[alwysdrunk]

9. The Dow dropped because of profit-taking

It was up big on Wednesday and early this morning and people who made money sold.

I know I sold today and made money. Probably buy again tomorrow or Wednesday.

[AllentownJake]

14. Exactly

It went up by huge margins for 4 days straight. People are going to take profits eventually.

[Hekate]

10. Obama speaks, it goes up. A Bushie speaks, it goes down. See how easy? nt

[uponit7771]

11. kkkon response: "CLINTON DID THIS !!!!

[AllentownJake]

12. Most likely the best 4 day period in history

and people taking short term profits off the gains.

[uponit7771]

13. Yeap, mostly GM and C dragging DOW down other stocks are OK

[AllentownJake]

15. GM needs to be replaced

Most people don't realize it but they are routinely adding and subtracting stocks.

Of course if they do that it may crash GM to a penny stock since Spyders will drop it.

[CitizenPatriot]

16. Palin had a rally today. nuff said. nt

[GoesTo11]

17. This was in response to new economic data.

1) Manufacturing stats came out. Things are dropping worse than expected.
2) Housing stats came out. Things are dropping worse than expected.
3) NBER stats about the recession came out. Things are dropping worse than expected.

Together, these make it look like the recession is going to be worse and longer than expected, hence companies will make lower profits for longer, more will fail, the economy will be smaller, so stocks are worth less.

There's always some psychology, but this was psychology driven by real news not just random shift in the wind.

This offsets half of the Obama bounce of last week. But really, with this kind of news heading into an already bad recession, without Obama, the Dow market might be at 6000 now. All this bad news, the only good thing is that a problem solver is coming in to replace a problem causer.