NDX Gets Hit With Four Downed Horsemen

The NDX, NASDAQ 100, had a rough day of it on Thursday. The four horsemen didn't have a very good day either considering the drubbing they took and that they are being over ridden by the Senior Senator from New York, Charles Schumer. Here is the statement from CNN Money:

"I think we are at a moment of economic crisis stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices," Schumer said. "Each of these problems alone would be enough of a threat to our economic well-being. But taken together, they are essentially the four horsemen of economic crisis."

Well, there you have it. In one fell swoop, the Senator has eliminated the "traditional" four horsemen and replaced them with the "new" and improved list. The list is only part of the whole story but since it includes the falling housing prices, we thought we could include it here. We received an email from CM saying that, "I think everybody loves the 4 horsemen tag. Somebody better copywrite it quick or it could get ugly." We had thought there might be a link to the Schumer quote but...luckily we had accidentally seen this quote.

Back to the action from Thursday: As the market opened, CSCO had set a pretty negative tone from Wednesday evening's news. That news had dragged the over night futures down but as the Asian markets closed, down pretty hard actually, and European markets opened, the futures found a way to come back up. The techs did have a weak opening and they were able to encourage the rest of the market down.

Soon after the initial drop, there were some buyers willing to come in and buy the Dip. That action did Not last very long and about three hours into the day the market looked as if it was going to yawn into the deep cavern. But, as the last seller was exiting, the buyers entered and the ensuing rally was impressive (probably short covering at any cost). This rally brought the SP 500 to Green and then the Dow to green but the Dow couldn't hold its color and left the day in the red. The SP 500 was about even on the day.

Ok, that wasn't what happened to the NDX. This index, along with the NASDAQ Comp, was down a bunch even at the end of the day. Yes, the general shape, meaning the way the index traded, was similar to the overall market as it normally is but the weakness in NDX was more pronounced. The NDX was down about 3% on the day, around 63 points, but it had been down 103 points earlier in the day so it had a big rally along with the rest of the market.

So, the "traditional" four horsemen are in the NDX and they powered the index down. GOOG was down 40, AAPL was down 10. The now famous index, the FSI, developed here this week, was down over 5% on the day.

Arithmetic index: 104.62
Market Cap index: 103.82