The market resumed its slide following the weekend with all three major indices ending the day down by more than 1%. The only economic news of the day was the Wholesale Inventories report, which usually has little impact to the market and today was no difference. Wholesale Inventories increased by 0.8% in January compared with 0.5% expected. Although it may have some positive impact to the first quarter GDP calculation, it simply does not bear the same degree of importance compared to Retail Sales and CPI reports later in the week.

All 10 major sectors were down for the day. Finally we started to see some extreme readings in technical indicators. The down volume outpaced up volume by 9 to 1 at NYSE. In addition, there were close to 1000 company stocks hitting fresh 52-week lows across the board. The VIX index closed at the highest level since January 22nd although it was still below 30. Financials and commodities were the biggest losers for the day. The former was due to more credit market worries while the latter was probably having more to do with profit-takings. The CRB commodity index changed little and crude oil hit a new record high. Treasuries continued to rally and the yield on the 10-year note was the lowest since June 2003. US dollar was mixed against major currencies and it hit a new 8-year low against the yen. One side note: China’s surplus unexpected narrowed in February to $8.56 billion while economists predicted a number close to $22 billion. It seems that China’s exports to US did slow down quite materially as shipments to the US fell in February to $15.5 billion compared to $19.2 billion in January and $16.3 billion a year earlier. Certainly, it’s not good news to both China and US.