Front and center this morning, the Russian ruble is getting whacked badly, and right now is trading lower in value than it ever did during the 2014 rout on the currency.  YIKES! This is getting really ugly folks, and one has to wonder where it ends, a short squeeze, Central Bank Intervention, or something like that to wrap a tourniquet around the bleeding.

But absent any of that, the currency traders are making the ruble pay for being so tied to the price of oil, which actually fell to $26.75 yesterday, but has bounced back to $28.11 as I write. This rout on the ruble has gotten completely away from fundamentals, folks. So, some semblance of reality has to come into focus here at some point.

Other than the ruble, the rest of the currencies are basically flat, or trading with a small bias to buy. The trading ranges are tiny, and it looks like a day when everyone is waiting for something to happen before they move.  The Chinese announced that they were taking a firehose to their markets and spraying an injection of cash.