Trader Talk

AP

The market has had a bid all night. European banks in particular are now in the green.

Well, that didn't take long. Yesterday, at about 5 p.m. ET, traders were predicting an ugly down day. Not happening.

This morning, everyone is talking about François Hollande of France like he's an old friend ... or a slightly crazy uncle.

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It was a lousy day for stocks, but not a panic day. Volume at the NYSE just average today. And yes the VIX was up 9 percent today, but look a little farther out: July VIX futures only up 2.9 percent, November 1.6 percent.

European elections: is Greece more important? Everyone fixated on Mr. Hollande's potential victory in France, but what about Greece? We could end up with a deadlock.

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Stock futures moved in an 11-point range in about 3 minutes on confusion over the April nonfarm payrolls report (115,000 vs. 168,000 consensus). The March revision — to 154,000 from 120,000 helped assuage the miss ... but is the trend improving or deteriorating?

Seems to me it's not weak enough for a third round of quantitative easing , but the underlying trend is weaker than we saw from December through February.

And the 8.1 percent unemployment rate , down from 8.2 percent? This was Art Cashin's, the director of floor operations for UBS Financial Services, worst-case scenario — a low jobs creation report with a lower unemployment number.

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Loic Venance | AFP | Getty Images

My heavens, the frenzy has begun on Facebook. You would think they were giving the stuff away.

"Probably the greatest IPO no-brainer of all time," one trader said to me.

Huh? How is that? They're offering 337.4 million shares between $28-$35.

Voting rights? Fuhgeddaboudit. There are two classes of common stock: A shares and B shares. There's 1.5 billion shares B shares, about 600 million of the A shares. The B shares have ten times the voting power of the A shares.

They're selling the A shares. And only the A shares.

Get it? You don't have any real voting power.

Valuation: who knows?

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What's up with HMOs? Recent misses, including today's miss by Health Net

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[HNT  Loading...      ()   ], follows other misses by Aetna

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[AET  Loading...      ()   ], Coventry

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[CVH  Loading...      ()   ], and Humana

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[HUM  Loading...      ()   ].

Two major issues:

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European stocks dropped, the euro rose as European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi spoke. Draghi said that the latest spate of weak economic data highlighted the "prevailing uncertainty."

Mr. Draghi wants to give himself flexibility, so he said the government bond buying program is "still there." But he dampened expectations of any immediate stimulus or Long-term refinancing operation program by saying that the perception that there is no near-term stimulus coming was "correct."

By taking easing off the table, the euro rose.

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Where are we now? Man, what a mess — it's confusing. So let's recap what is happening.

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Winston Davidian | Photodisc | Getty Images

U.S. futures were dropping all through the early morning as European manufacturing numbers were weak. Italian and Spanish PMI were both below 50, showing continuing contraction. Even Germany came in at 46.2, a tad below expectations and firmly in contraction territory.

The euro weakened when that news came out, and never recovered.

Then the April ADP jobs growth figure came out at 116,000, well below expectations of 175,000, and futures drooped another four points. True, ADP has been choppy: Numbers have been 226,000 in November, 267,000 in December, 182,000 in January, 230,000 in February, and 201,000 in March.

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