So I Hear That They're Blaming The Down Stock Market Today On Italy.....

Kinda makes you wonder.

thought to be winning. When Berlusconi's party narrowed that lead in the parliament and won more votes in the senate, things went down, especially in the Italian and other stock markets. Even Italy's financial sector would rather see a left-of-center government than to have a right-winger like Sylvio back in power.

The results were worse for the Bersani bloc than anyone had believed, but very good indeed for Grillo. The avowed agenda for his Five Star Movement is to shut down whatever government is formed and force another election by the end of summer.

So the Whole-Euro thing is quite in doubt at this moment.

It really was Italy that took the stock market down. When news of unexpected result hit, bond markets in Europe and the US were affected.

but there was an equally big surge against the Loonie. That means institutional investors in Europe and Canada were profit taking. The dollar fell against the Yen, so the Japanese will be buying bargains, probably overnight in pre market trading.

Wall Street doesn't give much of a shit about the sequester and won't until corporate profits go way down. Then they'll start to care. Sort of.

I don't think traders just woke up this morning and said, "hey, what's this sequester thingy?"

The market rose by around 100 points on Friday. Was there some news on Friday indicating that the sequester was going to be avoided that I missed?

Markets were up and then the news reversed, and they collapsed. Treasuries gained hard.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/25/us-italy-vote-idUSBRE91M0EB20130225

The big deal here is that Italy has very high debt, and if the voters won't go along with the plausibility program, Europe is going to see more hassles. The ECB might have to start buying Italian and Spanish bonds again.