Market Gaps Lower on Weaker European Data

We have an extreme rarity this morning - while U.S. markets often gap up, they rarely gap down anymore.  The excuse is weaker European data but frankly with such an overbought market, once it is ready to finally sell off any reason will do.  For personal reasons I find the gap down annoying because I wanted to get aggressive on index shorts once the S&P 500 sliced through 1130 (during the market day) ... rather than seeing a swoon in premarket that I cannot participate in.  The market rarely makes life easy does it?  With existing home sales at 10 AM maybe we'll get a bounce.  I'd like to use 1130/1131 as a pivot here... now that the S&P 500 is below it, try to short in the area near it with eventual aim for gap fills at 1110 and 1090.  Keep in mind the 200 day simple average is 1116/1117 so that will be a key support...that has to break for any serious move down.

As for the Europe news - frankly it should come to no surprise.  Europe has been weakening, but since many times its data is released the same day as Chinese news, everyone ignores Europe as the world's whole focus seems to a country who can magically grow 10% indefinitely with "little" inflation.  These reading are still expansionary but as the data at the front end of the month showed... slowing.  And with the euro rallying from spring lows - the huge advantage in export pricing has been slowly eroding.  (but we know the solution to that right? Time for the ECB to print euros!)

Via Bloomberg:

• Growth in Europe’s services and manufacturing industries weakened more than economists forecast in September, adding to evidence the recovery in the region is losing steam.  A composite index based on a survey of euro-area purchasing managers in both industries declined to 53.8 from 56.2 in August, London-based Markit Economics said today. Economists expected a reading of 55.7.
  
• Growth in Europe is slowing as the global economy cools and austerity measures aimed at reducing budget deficits and reining in borrowing costs undermine the recovery. Europe’s expansion will slow to a more “moderate” pace in the second half, the European Commission projected last week.
  
• “It’s clear that cracks are emerging in the recovery story,” saidMartin van Vliet, a senior economist at ING Bank in Amsterdam. “People were hoping that domestic demand would offset the drag from slower exports, but fiscal tightening is limiting the scope for domestic demand to pick up the baton.”