Business

Some companies are notorious for buying back billions in stock in order to mask the decline in their earnings by reducing the number of shares outstanding. Alcoa, which still has a major debt overhang from the last financial crisis, is unable to do that as it simply does not have the free cash flow to dedicate to shareholder friendly activities. Instead, Klaus Kleinfeld's company is forced to resort to an even more primitive form of EPS fudging: massive quarterly EPS addbacks.

Sure, last year was the first pre-election year stock market loss since the Great Depression. 

And admittedly, last week was the worst opening week of any year … EVER.

But that’s not the big news.

The bigger news is that the Baltic Dry Index has crashed.

And a prominent economist – University of California economics prof Brad DeLong – wrote last week:

The Fed's apparent new communication policy (as the rest of the world's markets and policy-makers try to force its hand)...

Earlier today, when Bank of America said that "panic is building" in the market and asked, rhetorically, "how bad could it get", it listed what it thought are the five core pillars in the bailed out bank's wall of worry:

While the biggest bankruptcy story of the day is this morning's chapter 11 filing by Arch Coal, one which would trim $4.5 billion in debt from its balance sheet while handing over the bulk of the post-reorg company to its first-lien holders as part of the proposed debt-for-equity exchange, the reality is that the Arch default was widely anticipated by the market.