Friday's Market Action

Today was one of those days – when a confluence of events comes together unexpectedly to hit the stock market.  However, each event, taken by itself, seems pretty benign:

• Chinese financial authorities tightened margin requirements to cool a seriously overheated stock market.   This should have no effect on the US economy, companies, or stock prices.

• US inflation was higher than expected, but the core year over year measure of 1.8% was only .1% over the Bloomberg consensus forecast.  Can economists even forecast that accurately? Any forecast to come within .1% seems pretty good to me.  So was it even a miss?  And isn't the Fed’s target inflation rate 2%?  Does that extra .1% inflation mean the Fed will lift rates in June when they wouldn't have otherwise?  Its doubtful such a small difference will make any difference to the data savvy Fed.

• Greece’s is running out of money and its debt talks look grim, again.  The next payment deadline is in one week.  However this is not new news, and the market should be immunized to Greek debt drama by now.

• There were negative earnings reports, including by Amex, but its much too early in earnings season to draw any conclusions.

So relax this weekend, there is really nothing to worry about, at least for the moment.