Just after 10pm Eastern, a big block in the S&P futures, over 10k contracts, was dumped in the very thin Sunday night tape, sending the complex lower by over 10 points, and after opening at 1768.5, ES dumped as low at 1754 in a matter of seconds, before recovering some of the losses to 1760 (1754 just happens to be perfectly the 50-day-moving average for the March 2014 futures contract). The Nikkei was hit concurrently by correlation algos impacted by the same downdraft, which also pinged the various JPY pairs lower, if leaving the EUR largely untouched. Needless to say there was no news of note to prompt this move, which appears to have been either a partial fat finger, or someone trying to exit the market in a hurry ahead of next week's FOMC festivities.
ES:
[5]
driving ES perfectly down to its 50DMA...
[6]
Nikkei likewise dropped:
[7]
In the meantime, the 10 Year is not exactly rushing for the exits:
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If a reason for the drop manifests itself, we will update this post, in the meantime, we expect Overnight Ramp Capital to arrive promptly or else confidence in central-planning may take a hit ahead of the Wednesday Taperish FOMC, and Thursday's double POMO.