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oday is the end of one of the worst months in the stock market history. At the same time we are ending the first quarter of the year.

Ending the quarter is more important because of the re-balancing that the big investment firms do when this date comes. Since stocks are much lower than the end of the previous quarter there could be big changes in the portfolios of the big investment funds. This demand for stocks is one of the reasons for yesterday’s rally. We will see today if this trend continues.

In Asia, it was a relatively calm day, with Chinese stocks neutral, South Korea up by 2% and Japan down by less than 1%. The economic data coming out of these countries was positive with retail beating expectations, while industrial production was down, but less than expected. In China the PMIs came much better than expected, but this data is backward looking so it did not affect the markets very much.

Europe’s consumer price index numbers were all good, indicated a smaller than expected inflation, but still positive. This is good for a time of crises because it means central banks can push more liquidity into the economy without a worry of inflation. The European stocks started the day with dissent gains from the good economic data, over 2%, but after the initial jump, all markets have erased most of their gains, with Germany, France and Italy now in negative territory.

In the US futures have been positive for most of the night following the global markets. In the last two hours there has been a significant sell off, pushing all the major indexes from 1-2% gains to a 1% decline at this time 8 30AM ET.