Monday, May 16: Afternoon News

And that’s today’s closing bell!

Here is the scoreboard. A selloff, as you can see.

NASDAQ: -45.42
S&P 500: -8.00
Dow: -43.59

Here are the top stories for today.

• In terms of attention and headlines, there’s no question that the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on 7 counts related to sexual assault was the primary area of attention. There were a lot of attempt to connect that news to the market — would it hit the euro or Greek debt or oil? — but there was no clear connection with anything. European stocks did get hit, although the euro was strong, and sovereign debt didn’t move too much.

• That being said, the situation in Greece is bad. Athens stocks fell hard (as did German equities) amid fears of an upcoming restructuring. Not that this is any news of course. The situation in Greece has been bad for a long long time.

• The US market started on a negative note, and basically got worse throughout the day. Tech stocks fell pretty hard, so the NASDAQ kind of died. Big tech stocks like Apple, Microsoft, and Google all fell 2% or more. Google announced its first ever bond offering (is this hinting at something?). Yahoo fell another 5%, as concerns continue to rise about losing its Chinese internet assets. Speaking of Chinese internet stocks, all the hot Chinese tech stocks like RenRen are falling pretty badly too.

• Along with the losses in the momentum equities, the commodity selloff continues to be the huge story. Silver fell below $34. Oil fell below $98. Odd; for some reason, the American dollar fell too.

• As for econ news, the most notable was the Empire State Manufacturing Index, which missed big early on, though it still showed growth.