GE leads the market down fed had 6 rate cuts

Treasuries rose, heading for a weekly gain, after General Electric Co. reported its first quarterly drop in profit since 2003 and U.S. consumer confidence slumped to the lowest in 26 years. The Treasury market has priced in a recession and very weak economic data, if things get worse, we're going to see another leg down in interest rates.

U.S. stocks fell after GE, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, said first-quarter earnings slumped 12 percent because of an inability to sell some assets and higher-than-forecast losses at its finance businesses. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1 percent, the most in two weeks.

Traders increased bets the Fed will add to its six rate cuts since September to bolster economic growth, futures on the Chicago Board of Trade show. Traders see a 52 percent chance the Fed will lower its rate for overnight lending between banks by a half-point to 1.75 percent on April 30. The likelihood of a cut that big hasn't been above 50 percent since March 31. Futures also indicate a 21 percent chance the Fed will lower the rate to 1.5 percent by June.

SP 500 daily How many more days of consolidation

Where is this one going? Waiting for the next bad news to hit.

Commercial real estate will be the next wave of write offs. Seems like their is misdirection from the bonds market.

what is another 6-6.5 billion

According to CNBC, Merrill Lynch is likely to post a first-quarter loss on further writedowns of between $6 billion and $6.5 billion, according to senior executives at the company.

Unlike earlier writedowns at Merrill (NYSE: mer) and other Wall Street investment banks, the latest round of write downs are not solely tied to subprime loans, but instead are linked to commercial real-estate debt exposure and other types of loans, these people said.