Why the Dow Fell Today

After a flat day yesterday, the market was down today as all three major indices lost ground. Here's how they did.

Index	Change	Ending Value
Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEX: ^DJI  )	-139.94 [-1.14%]	12,151.41
S&P 500 (INDEX: ^GSPC  )	-15.79 [-1.25%]	1,249.64
Nasdaq (INDEX: ^IXIC  )	-35.22 [-1.34%]	2,589.98

In a word, the news that moved the market today was "Europe." We saw the euro hit an 11-month low versus the dollar as the market readies for a key Italian long-dated debt auction tomorrow. One euro now buys $1.2941 worth of greenbacks.

Looking at individual stocks, it was an almost unanimous down day. All 30 of the Dow stocks took a hit, ranging from -3.6% to -0.2%. In the S&P 500, all but 24 lost ground. The range there was -4.6% to 2%.

In the Dow, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC  ) [-3.6%] and Alcoa (NYSE: AA  ) [-3.1%] were the biggest losers. They didn't top the broader S&P 500 loser list, though. The dubious honors there went to Cliffs Natural Resources (NYSE: CLF  ) [-4.6%] and Tesoro (NYSE: TSO  ) [-4.2%]. The banking and commodities sectors both tend to react in an exaggerated fashion to the European news du jour, since both are highly affected by macro forces.

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