What Tanked The Market At 1:30pm EST Today?
I can’t quite figure out why the market started tanking at 1:30pm EST today (S&P Intraday Chart).
I want to cheat and say it was GM’s ugly May Sales Report in which they announced a 28% decline in sales and a 39% decline in truck sales compared to the year ago period. But it wasn’t because that news didn’t hit until 1:45pm EST as you can see from GM’s stock chart (GM Intraday Chart).
Certainly, this report accentuated and accelerated the downward move in the overall market when it came out. In fact, it’s likely responsible for a big part of the overall move.
But it isn’t responsible for that first move downward. I’d like to figure out what was. But, really, there might not be some specific piece of news that started pushing stocks down at 1:30pm EST. It could just be a natural intraday swing that happened to closely coincide with the GM announcement.
Yesterday’s trading was also driven by a breaking piece of intraday news: an S&P ratings downgrade on some financials.