When you look at a list of industries like this one on the losing side, you can see groups that are comprised of economically sensitive and commodity-price sensitive stocks.

What happened yesterday with the publishing of the previously private and confidential minutes of the FOMC (U.S. Fed) December 14 meeting explains what happened in the equity market. The Fed reported they were getting anxious about a possible inflation scenario in the U.S., and investors, who are already well positioned in economic growth-oriented and inflation beneficiary stocks, got nervous about prospects of Fed tightening.

The defensive side of portfolios, which includes the economic non-cyclical stocks, was largely left untouched on the day.

As an aside, maybe Larry Kudlow is telling us one thing on his popular CNBC talk show, and doing another. Maybe this perma-bull is telling us that he's betting heavily on strong economic growth, but actually investing long-term in defensive issues, because how else could anyone possibly explain his seque into last evening's show: "In what is a slow start to the year;"?

Should today's follow through on the NYSE and Nasdaq start to take down the defensive issues, as well as the cyclicals, then investors ought to get concerned that yesterday's extreme pull-back just might have legs.

A couple days in a down cycle does not make for a meaningful long-term trend, (unless of course it happens to be 10,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the sea). Day traders were aggressive yesterday in pursuing the fast market action in the high beta stocks, but generally the long-term investor has not yet joined the fray.

What I love about capital markets is that today the action is likely to shift to a different landscape.

BTW, I liked the new graphics display of info on the CNBC screens today in the 5am to 7am ET slot. I wonder if it will become a permanent feature? It makes Bloomberg TV look dated.

BCara@BillCara.com