Another day, another round of bad news from the brokers and the banks.

If the Aussie market follows the U.S. lead today, look out. Before we break for lunch here in Colorado, stocks in New York are taking a beating. The Dow Jones Industrials are down nearly 200 points. And it’s such a nice day out, too.

More losses… Currencies rebound… Jumping off the bandwagon…  Slowing renminbi appreciation? And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Dan Amoss thinks he’s found the next culprit. And this isn’t just a gut feeling, there’s real evidence here. Is the worst behind us? Dan doesn’t thinks so.

The base metals took a severe beating on Thursday. Copper was down from the pre-dawn hours straight through the day, only coming off its lows near the noon hour and finishing at $3.497/lb., down 6 cents.

For months now, the big story in the Aussie market has been China’s Inc.’s stealth invasion of Australia through the share market. A Trojan equity horse, if you will. But maybe we had the story all wrong. Maybe the Pilbara is invading China!

Citigroup has slashed its earnings outlook for Wall Street investment banks Goldman Sachs Group, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Morgan Stanley because of a tough operating environment, according to a report by Thomson Reuters.

The second quarter has seen lower client-related trading volumes, little banking activity, losses related to ineffective hedging and reversals of gains on fair valuing liabilities, [Citigroup analyst] Prashant Bhatia wrote in a note dated May 16.

The base metals were nearly all in the red on Wednesday. Copper tumbled from the pre-dawn hours until about mid-morning, then traded with a slight upward bias to finish at $3.7215/lb., down more than 6¾ cents.

It took a sub-prime/credit/derivatives debacle to make it happen, but it’s finally starting to dawn on some people that you can’t build a whole economy on the practice of moving money around.

The Cartel showed up on Globex trading shortly after London opened for business. Someone was offering physical in size and they were successful in driving down the gold price below $900 briefly before it recovered somewhat to slightly over $900. Silver had the same chart pattern.