U.S. futures pointed lower after President Barack Obama's address to Congress Tuesday evening, as investors didn't get the specifics they hoped for on the government's plan to rescue troubled banks.

Earlier in the day markets rallied after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave Wall Street a double dose of reassurance. He told Congress Tuesday the recession might end this year, and that regulators aren't planning to nationalize banks. The news alleviated some of investors' worries about the economy and the banking industry, and lifted the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 index off their lowest levels since 1997.


Wall Street points lower after Obama speech - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wall-Street-points-lower-apf-14460382.html)

Reality sucks sometimes. This too shall pass.

The title of that article is laughable. There are plenty of things to complain about - we don't need to make up any.

First, that article was posted a few minutes past midnight. Nobody is trading those futures between 9 pm and midnight, the volume is almost nothing, so you can't attach much meaning to anything they do during that time frame.

Second, the market futures actually did nothing but trade up after Obama's address. It wasn't a huge amount, and I wouldn't make much of it, but they definitely did not trade down after the address. To say that they 'pointed lower after President Barack Obama's address' is complete BS. They were lower than they had been at the close on Tuesday, but that is because they had been trading down after the close, and didn't turn around UNTIL Obama's address.

Third, it wouldn't have been unexpected for them to have traded down overnight as we had a pretty significant rally yesterday.

Fourth, the futures were actually up a little 10 minutes ago, and now are down just a little - they are essentially flat this morning relative to yesterday's close. (Just for clarity though, they are definitely up since the time when Obama gave his address.)

This is why I don't give much weight to things that 'journalists' write, opting instead to figure things out for myself. All too often they either don't understand what they are talking about, or have an agenda which causes them to misrepresent or misinterpret things.