Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011 4:21 PM – Big Gains Pared a Lot on Eurozone Friction

Stocks gave up more than half their big gains late in the day, finishing up about 1%. That appears to roughly coincide with the news that a split is developing within the Eurozone.

Some of the buying this week may be from end of the quarter buying after selling the previous week. Other buying has been from seeming progress in the Eurozone talks but that idea had a setback today.

The split is apparently on committing to expanding the size of the bond bailout $$ while increasing the amount bondholders agreed to bear in losses. Germany is in the corner of wanting to expand the losses for banks and other investors in order to get the size of the bailout fund down. France, because of its banking problems stands to see its biggest banks get into worse trouble and so France stands in the other corner. Each has allies.

Gold was up 2%, bonds were lower and the dollar was down.