The easiest way to understand the stock market right now is to discard the notion that fundamental economic analysis means anything. It is a game, with a handful of high-stakes players gambling with borrowed money on a handful of issues with high-speed computers, all on short bets.
BTW — the “short” in “short bets” truly is a short time.
Some 65%+ of the volume in the markets now is held for only about 10 to 11 seconds.
Dunno if you’ve seen this:
http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/finance/High_Frequency_Trading_special_report.pdf
For those who pooh-pooh HFT, there has to be a lot of business there for cisco to set up a solutions group for that market segment.