Sure no one trusts the S&P and by itself the S&P downgrading America is a joke.

But the newspapers and Yahoo Finance love a great big fat negative headline like this and it does seem that everyone was leading long coming into today.

We have shaken off a crashing dollar, Greece, Japan and an awful real estate recovery. I mean awful. It’s getting weaker.

We have been conditioned for MERGER MONDAY surprises and even 6 IPO’s are slated for just this week. One called ‘PeePee’ I think is even slated to premiere this week in China.

But, the banks have been extra week and heavy and the ‘momentum stocks’ were rising everyday. Gold and Silver are the new T-Bills. Not a wiff of fear.

It’s not important what made the market move THIS MORNING, it’s understanding the mood of the tape. You will never catch a headline like this unless you were lucky because they come out of the blue to wreck a perfect trend of easy Monday’s.

Even $aapl stock has been heavy and $goog can’t catch a bid.

You must read the tea leaves and sometimes your first losses are the best. Selling stocks costs the exact same as buying them. Money management and returns involves the preservation of capital, not just the return on investment.

Take days like today as a reminder that the market goes down and sometimes you will get spanked by a Monday headline as well.