Are witches to blame for today’s market decline?

The Dow sank as much as 140 points heading into mid-day, and sits below the 12,000 barrier broken earlier this week. 

There could me many reasons for the decline: rising oil prices, downgrades, shaky earnings, or perhaps risky witches. 

Risky witches?  Yes, today is a special day for witching and in a Harry Potter-esque scene witches from all over the world have converged on U.S. financial markets to wreak havoc…I hope no one actually believed that ;)

Seriously, today is a day of ”quadruple witching.”  It happens four times a year on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December.

On these special days, four sets of derivative contracts expire: stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures.  Some investors blame quadruple witching for trading sessions with elevated volume and volatility, particularly around the market’s open and close.

Today’s market is plagued by a variety of negatives…handcuffed hedge fund managers, downgraded bond insurers, etc.  As the day unfolds one can determine how much the witches had to do with it.
 

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