Stocks remained under pressure as unease continues around the European situation.

Trading volumes in the corporate bond markets were extremely light with much of Wall Street shifting into holiday mode.

Currency and commodity markets bore the brunt of the Euro zone unease with the Euro closing below the psychologically important 1.3 threshold against the U.S. dollar.

Commodities were all significantly lower (down 5% or more) with oil, gas, gold, silver, and copper under particular strain.

Everyone's favorite safe harbor, U.S. Treasury bonds, rallied sharply especially after the auction for the 30 year Treasury bond drew very strong demand.

Why was there such a sharp move in currencies and commodities on a day with otherwise light trading volumes?

The first reason is that investors likely bailed out of risky managed futures funds on the heels of the ongoing MF Global missing money story.

Second the Federal Reserve's coordinated Central Bank liquidity injection of not so long ago failed to have the desired effect as cross-currency basis swap indicators continue to point to a dollar shortage.

As funding costs remain high for many European financial institutions, they are in a race to shed assets and reduce financing lines to corporations.

This has the unintended consequence of forcing many commodity players that had hedged themselves against future price increases to unwind and sell their positions, thus sharply depressing commodity prices.

As for the asset sales by European banks, the difficulty lies in finding buyers.

With a surfeit of European bank assets for sale, buyers are thinking "Why buy now when I can bide my time and buy for much cheaper at a future date?"

Ironically, European banks have been in a race to spend cash to buy back their Tier 1 debt securities that have been trading at steep discounts in the secondary bond markets.

These Tier 1 debt buy backs allow banks to cosmetically improve their capital picture per accounting rules however they also mean that banks have less cash on hand to weather the coming storm.

Cash is king.

Then again, the moral hazard engendered by past bail-outs means banks may care less.

In the past, when push came to shove, the Central Bank printing presses always roared into action to extend troubled banks a lifeline at taxpayers' expense.

On the technology front, recent high-flying social-networking / discount coupon stocks such as LinkedIn and Groupon continue to take a hit.

For anyone with memory of the first dot-com boom (and subsequent bust in 2000) it is obvious that these social networking / discount coupon site stocks should not trade anywhere near their inflated levels.

Facebook (not yet public with its IPO – initial public offering – due for sometime next year) falls into this camp too.

Remember the cautionary tales of MySpace and Friendster, once social networking darlings and now worth monopoly money.

These mini bubbles should not detract from real technology stories, however, that hold real promise and revenue-generating potential.

The field of mobile security software offers real potential.

In the long term, technology will play a strong role powering the economy out of the recession.

Initial jobless claims and producer price index inflation numbers are out on Thursday.