The big news on the day is the Shanghai Composite out of China that fell over 6.7% on Monday, bringing down the rest of Asia with it. Even Japan’s Nikkei index closed in the red despite Japan’s announcement that they had seen growth of nearly 2% in factory production in July. The Chinese market is becoming a very powerful leading force in the markets, setting the tone of each day with its major swings up and down.
In effect, the American markets are looking a bit red. Mondays are always slow for news and data, so investors look elsewhere, like China, for direction. One Chinese analyst noted that there was no direct piece of news or data that caused the drop, but investors are worried about the economy and are panic selling. The worries over the recovery in America have started to crop up as last week we saw a number of neutral to red days.
Futures are already down as of 7:30 AM. The Dow is down nearly 55 points, the Nasdaq has dropped almost 6 points, and the S&P 500 has skated down nearly 6 points. It is a broad range selloff that appears to be affecting each and every sector. The major sectors hit in China were the financials and energy service companies, so we should definitely watch those for extra volatility today.
Europe followed China down its bearish path, with almost all the major European indices dropping at least 0.5% to 1%. England’s FTSE 100 was actually trading up, however, around 1%.
There are very few stories today in the market, which really makes me worry about the market’s ability to stop any major selling off. I am afraid we are going to see this market move down in major swings today because there will not be anything for buyers to get in on for the day. The box office weekend was pretty lousy with The Final Destination taking home the top spot with under $30 million. In second was Inglorious Basterds and in third was The Weinstein Company’s Halloween II. The 
movie made only $17 million, but that was greater than its only $15 million budget.
In other news, BJ Services Inc.has announced that they will be bought out by Baker Hughes, another oil services company. The deal is worth $5.5 billion and it will help Baker Hughes as it looks to improve its shale oil and oil exploration and…
