Crude oil flash crash? It was a slow day in equity markets with the major indexes giving back some of last week's gains, but the real action happened in the oil market. U.S. crude dropped from $98.65 a barrel to below $95 in minutes, while brent crude sank from $115.20 at 1:52 p.m to $111.60 three minutes later. Thirteen thousand U.S. crude lots and 10,000 Brent lots traded in one minute during the price drop, up from 131 and 152 lots respectively in the minute prior to the first waves of selling. So... the algos strike again - but don't worry the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) is looking into it.
As for the major indexes the S&P 500 fell 0.3% and NASDAQ 0.2% as Apple (broken record) helped hold up the latter index especially with another 1.2% gain bringing it to within sniffing distance of $700. The S&P 500 is now on its third day over this multi month ascending channel...
...while the NASDAQ looks to be forming its third bull flag
We can see from the advance decline data that it was actually a day of quite poor breadth but with some of the key large cap names holding up, and a rotation into the healthcare space today the indexes hid a lot of the weakness.
Along the Apple lines, iPhone 5 sales set a record - doubling the sales of the 4s in its first day.
