How bad is this stock market? So bad that even those of us old enough to remember the Johnny Carson routine can't think of an appropriate zinger.

The shares of Citigroup dropped after the stock market opening this morning and the stock (C) lost $9bn on Wall Street plunge.

As the bad news and the uncertainty about the financial rescue plan accumulate and stay, the global stock markets continue to fall. Uncertainty about the banking rescue plan advanced by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. and deepening gloom that the global financial crisis is biting harder hit Asian markets hard on Thursday. Tokyo closed down 5.25%.

Yesterday was a great day in U.S. and global stock markets. Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied almost 900 points. Today global markets are in a rally mode as well, but U.S. is weak as futures are falling. Investors are hoping and looking to Federal Reserve's rate cut decision this afternoon.

Wall Street enjoyed a powerful rally as investors converged for a huge shopping spree. Valuations appeared compelling after the S&P 500 closed at a five-and-a-half year low yesterday. The Dow posted its second-biggest point gain ever.

Markets around the world are plummeting on continuing fears about a global recession and forced delevering of the financial system. We wake to find the S&P futures lock limit down.

Following the lead of Thursday's huge drop of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Asian markets plunged in Friday trading, setting the stage for possibly another debacle on the American stock market.

Like 7/7/7 last year, this year's big magic number day is 8/8/8. This was the big Olympics high point. The US lunged for Russia's throat and failed to make a kill. The Chinese leadership has successfully strangled a too-hot market and fended off the Japanese who tried to flood China with Japan Carry Trade hyper-inflation. Now we are in a strong deflationary cycle. WHICH CHINA WANTED. Neither the US nor Japan wanted to stop inflation, they wanted to export it to China and OPEC.

At the end of the settlement date of July 31, 2008, short interest in 2,634 NASDAQ Global Market(sm) securities totaled 10,560,730,163 shares compared with 10,977,290,029 shares in 2,632 Global Market issues reported for the prior settlement date of July 15, 2008.

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) announced the listing of Chardan 2008 China Acquisition Corp. ("Chardan") (Nasdaq:CACUA), an acquisition company targeting mid-size Chinese companies seeking access to U.S. capital markets.

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) today announced that The NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ) has listed a new exchange traded fund (ETF) sponsored by Barclays Global Investors, N.A. (BGI).

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.(sm) (Nasdaq:NDAQ) announced consolidated market performance statistics for its U.S. and Nordic exchanges for the month of July 2008.