The Slope - Trading Horizon @ 3 October 2011

The major US indices are down, with the S&P500 index being around 1105, down 2.3% on the day.

This is inline with the recent trend of the last 5 straight days.

Reuters:

[ The Good Ship Dexia Beaches near the Shores of Normandy ] Banks slumped after a 10 percent fall in shares of Franco-Belgian financial group Dexia. The company is highly exposed to Greek loans and it highlighted concerns about the extent to which a default in Athens would damage already fragile European banks.

[ Some story about a Bunch of Honest Cretans ] Greece admitted it will miss its deficit targets this year, which could make the country unable to receive more international aid and run out of cash. 

 [ Meanwhile, back in the fatherland, Bank Of America and Morgan Stanley are about to require some expensive life support if they are to survive the Greek default (Note of thanks to the desk at Goldman Sachs which planted the derivative timebomb in the basement of the less-than-dextrous aforementioned European bank, within the circle of the European monetary union) ] U.S. banks including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America have all seen their credit default swap costs jump as other banks hedge their counterparty exposures and speculative traders bet on the situation worsening.

[ Margin Stanley ] Morgan Stanley has been the most volatile name in recent weeks, with the cost of insuring its debt rising to levels not seen since November 2008, according to Markit data. [ may be being circled by hedge fund vultures ] "Everyone is looking at the Morgan Stanleys of the world, looking at their CDS gapping up here," said David Lutz, managing director of trading, Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets in Baltimore.