Just about the time you think the new Administration is going to really shake things up in D.C. and the bulls are gonna “keep on rockin in the free world” (hat tip to Messrs Young, Vedder, McCready, Gossard, and Ament for one of the best performances ever), Mexico and the immigration order happened. And then Greece happened. (Yes again.) And finally, as you might expect by now, the high speed technicians happened. Whoosh, the day was on.

Don’t look now fans, but after a pretty decent string of good stuff coming out of the White House (well, good for the stock market, anyway), Trump & Co. appear to have bonked hard on this immigration thing.

It looks like offering no warning and then issuing an executive order on who can and can’t enter the country – leaving a lot of non-terrorist types stranded in airports in the process – is frowned upon by an awful lot of people. Some high powered businessmen based in Silicon Valley voiced their opinions publicly. German officials (as in Angela Merkel) chimed in. The U.K.’s Theresa May, who happens to be trying to cut a deal with Mr. Trump, disagreed with the approach. Heck, even Canada was heard from, via Twitter, of course! Oh, and then there were a whole bunch of folks who decided to walk around in circles outside airports while carrying signs.

To say that the action and then the reaction got people’s attention is an understatement. Stocks sank overseas. And when the opening bell rang at the corner of Broad and Wall (or more accurately, as the millisecond clock struck 09:30:00 in Mahwah New Jersey), “risk off” became the phrase of the day in the early going.

While the decline didn’t last long, the venerable DJIA did find itself down more than 220 points within 90 minutes of the open. The streaming headlines on TV called it the worst day of 2017 (which, of course, isn’t saying much when the calendar year isn’t even 20 trading days old yet). And as the red numbers began to pile up, it felt like the bad old days might be returning.