According to a a report from the Wall Street Journal "U.S. stocks had their first real selloff of 2014, with the Dow down nearly 200 points. The hesitancy that has marked trading so far this year snowballed into something more damaging.
For the Dow, which has lost ground in five of the past six session, it was the biggest one-day selloff since Sept. 20, 2013, and in these early days of 2014, the index is off 1.9%".
"There wasn’t any one big trigger. Part of it was simply that snowball effect. There was a note from Goldman Sachs, in which the firm said equities valuations looked “lofty by almost any measure.” There was a lingering bad taste from last week’s jobs report, and the news out of retail-land increasingly makes it seem like the holiday season was a weak one. Earnings season is just about upon us and it doesn’t look so hot.
Nobody’s going to start panicking now, even with the Dow down four days in a row. It suffered a similar losing streak in December, and its losses for the year are slight"
Coming Up: Asian investors aren’t getting anything to go on from overseas. Friday’s U.S. jobs report cast a pall on Asia on Monday, and Monday’s U.S. stocks selloff could cast a similar pall on Tuesday.
Japanese markets reopen Tuesday after a public holiday on Monday. Investors there will face data on the current-account balance, the broadest measure of Japan’s trade with the rest of the world. Economists expect a current-account deficit of 380 billion yen in November, after a surprise deficit of 127.9 billion yen in October.
Thailand will continue to be a focus. Monday’s protests were relatively calm, and the surprise of it sparked a stock rally in Bangkok. The protesters, though, only seem to be swelling in the city, shutting down the capital.
