After Friday’s brutal beat down, the major equity indices are trying to make up the losses in one go, but all remain well off the highs. Following the country's soft GDP data last week, China's central bank cut the reserve requirement ratio for all banks by 100 basis points yesterday to 18.5%, adding more liquidity to its economy in order to combat slowing growth. The result was ultimately a massive tumble in Asian stock markets, very similar to that of the US last Friday. However, the US market gained ground on this news in addition to more positive earnings results from big name companies. Haliburton (HAL), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Hasbro (HAS) are trending higher today, giving a sizable lift to their respective sectors.

Domestic economic data is incredibly light during today’s session. There was one notable release, but the results were far from stellar. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) for the month of March did not give an overall good vibe for the economy, falling steeply to -0.42 from an already weak and downwardly revised -0.18 (from -0.11) in February. The economists note that the quarter as whole was also weak, with the 3-month average coming in at -0.27. The CFNAI designed to better gauge overall economic activity and inflationary pressure. The CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of national economic activity, and it is constructed to have an average value of zero and a standard deviation of one. Since economic activity tends toward trend growth rate over time, a positive index reading corresponds to growth above trend and a negative index reading corresponds to growth below trend. The index was primarily pulled lower by the production component, which came in at a reading of -0.27 for the month. Also weak was the personal consumption & housing component, at -0.13 and employment at -0.3, which was a big step down from the +0.11 reading in February. Overall, there was only one positive component in March, sales/orders/inventories, and it was only barely in the green by +0.01.  All in all, the market is not reacting to this data because it merely confirms what we already know: March was a terrible month for most economic data.