Thursday Afternoon Cheat Sheet: 3 Stories That Moved Markets

After a brief moment of optimism early in the morning, the markets struck out for negative territory and remained there for the rest of the day. News out of Europe wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either as tension continued to brew over the status of major global currencies. The euro fell 0.89 percent against the dollar and 0.87 percent against the yen.

At the close: DJIA: -0.30%, S&P 500: -0.18%, NASDAQ: -0.11%.

Here are three stories that moved markets on Thursday:

1) The European Central Bank decided to keep the main interest rate at 0.75 percent, in line with most expectations but failing to ease tensions that have grown surrounding the European economy recently. Not only have bad omens emerged surrounding the relationship between major currencies, but ECB president Mario Draghi, who has been credited with saving the euro zone, has found himself involved in a derivatives scandal at Siena’s Mote dei Paschi bank.

The scandal involves Draghi’s failure to discover a 1-billion-euro trading loss at the Bank of Italy while he was in charge between 2006 and 2011. In a question and answer session on Thursday, Draghi denied claims that he had been lax in his oversight, brushing off the resurfacing of the scandal as a bit of political positioning ahead of elections in the Italy… (Read more.)