Market View: Ugly start to 2008

Market View: Ugly start to 2008 -Update- -Technical-

The market's performance headed into the session was one sided as the Nasdaq Comp and Russell 2000 were down the previous five days. Despite the already extensive slide the market took it on the chin off the open following the lousy jobs report (payroll 18 K consensus 70 K, unemployment 5.0% consensus 4.8%) and continued to slide late into the day. The breakdown extension has seen the Dow and S&P drop roughly 5.7% (high to low) off last week's peak but this is still better than the Nasdaq Comp (-8.4%) and Russell 2000 (-10%). The slump was virtually across the board (only Utility up 0.9%) with Housing -5.8%, Computer-Hardware -5.5%, Casino -5%, Disk Drive -4.8%, Internet HOLDRs -4.7%, Transports -4.5%, Semi HOLDRs -4.3%, Paper -4.3%, Bank -3.9%, Broker -3.8% pacing the way.