I hope you didn't lose any sleep last night

If you were watching the market around 9:30 and beyond, I was up until about 2 a.m. then you might have seen something pretty scary, whether you were 100% net short, sidelined in cash or carrying a few long positions. The E-minis (which are mini S&P-500 futures contracts, but 1/5 the size and very actively traded) dropped in 5 points almost immediately. Dow Futures were down about 70 points during the Asian market.

E-Minis last night-note the vertical drop to the right.

Furthermore the Euro was getting hammered (which means the dollar rises and most every investment falls).

 Here's the consolidation I wrote about after the close that was setting up, it wasn't this mature, but had made the first lower high. That consolidation fell apart overnight dragging the Euro down the 140.014 level.

Since the European opening, the Euro has climbed up to cut some of the overnight losses.

Suffice it to say, last night it looked like we were going to have an apocalyptic opening this morning.

Currently the market is down in pre-market, it' given up a little since the open at 8 a.m., especially after the Durable Goods miss out this morning. However, considering what things were looking like last night going into the European opening, it looked like there could have been a far worse situation this morning.

There aren't any hard facts as to why the futures dropped so quickly, only speculation that the Greeks were going to call a snap election, which was denied as a rumor. The danger there would have been the population would not have voted for any person/party that is advocating more austerity measures and the likelihood of a Greek default would have risen dramatically.

On the other hand, it could have simply been an overnight play to put the pain to traders.