ANTenna Blog -- The rANT

Yeah, we know that just yesterday The rANT said that "fluctuations" in the stock market weren't the key indicator in this crisis. But darn it, yet another day of the Dow dropping 500 points makes us nervous.

It doesn't help that the biggest victims seem to be financial and technology companies. After all, the financial sector is what got us into this mess, and some of the biggest losers were the supposedly "safe" companies that snapped up the fraked-up ones. Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley lost about 25% each. Let The rANT repeat: BoA, Merrill and Morgan each lost a quarter of the market value in a single day! As we heard someone say, we're running out of healthy banks to take over the troubled ones.

The Dow wasn't the only loser today. All the major indexes slid more than 5%, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq falling closer to 6%.

Here are some of the Dow's bad-news benchmarks:

It has fallen 33.3 percent since its record close of 14,164.53, a year ago Thursday.

Tuesday's close was its lowest close in five years, since Sept. 30, 2003.

In just five trading days this month, and in the fourth quarter, it is down about 1,400 points, or 13 percent.

Meanwhile, poster-boy Bernanke was warning that the financial crisis could still torpedo the larger economy, which many took as a sign that the Fed might further cut interest rates. And the markets still tanked.

On the plus side, there was apparently some indication of a loosening in the all-important credit markets:

The Fed announced that it would buy up billions of dollars worth of short-term debt, effectively trying to provide liquidity to a market that has all but shut down. Investors warmed to the news and borrowing rates for overnight commercial paper loans dropped. Yields on Treasuries moved higher, suggesting that investors were willing to leave the safe haven of government notes.

Overseas, meanwhile, the declines were smaller, and and France's CAC-40 actually rose a bit. The rANT feels better, how about you?

If so, maybe the tech sector will pull you back to reality. Amidst the bloodbath, Apple lost more than 9%, Cisco dropped almost 8%, and Google and Microsoft each shed almost 7%.

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