After 4 days of the Dow moving up or down >400 pts today looks pretty tame. Stocks are up about 0.5% but has not moved around much today.
France banned short selling of banks for the next 2 weeks and European markets responded very favorably, up 2%-3%.
In the US the consumer confidence indicator plunged to the level last seen in 2008’s panic. No doubt the wrangling over the debt ceiling had a lot to do with that.
Gold is lower. It has gotten pretty far ahead of itself and a pullback of 10%-15% is a possibility. That would still not break the uptrend and would actually be a good thing long term. The chart below is borrowed from my friend Malcolm Trevillian at Chatham Advisors.
