What a terrible if not inauspicious start December

What a terrible if not inauspicious start December. The S&P/ASX 200 Index got hammered today - down 2% to 5207.7. The fall follows yesterday's plunge, making the two-day loss the worst since June 2013. The sharp crash in the oil price is to blame and it may derail my predictions of a Santa Rally this year (see my earlier post). There is still time for the market to recover for the year-end party, but the window is rapidly closing. It has maybe another week to find its feet and rise to the occasion. In the meantime, we can be mesmerized by the heat map below from IRESS. It shows where's today's carnage was concentrate in (the more red, the more pain). No surprises about the amount of red in the energy sector, while BHP Billiton's (BHP) 5.3% crash to $29.27 is gut wrenching, especially since it finished only one miserable cent from its intra-day low. Follow me on Twitter - brenlau