Markets had an unexpected and intense sell off this morning on virtually no news. I'm sure many people will cite 'profit taking' as the reason, but I seriously doubt it. QQQ experienced a 4% intra day drop which is a very material decline. Usually declines of this magnitude are triggered by unexpected news. Yet this morning, current events were very quiet.
Then at 1:00 PM eastern, the POTUS announced that Iran shot down a US helicopter last night and promised to retaliate. While it was already known earlier in the day that a helicopter went down, the reasons were unknown. The announcement that the Iranians shot it down made it a more serious issue.
I suspect certain parties were tipped off on these developments and sold off the markets in the morning. And once the news was announced at 1:00, the market inexplicably started to surge, almost like insiders were taking profits on their morning selling activity.
Overall, this was a very suspicious day of trading.