AP

The stock market stumbled into the final minutes of trading, with the euro cracking back below the $1.30 mark and Bank of America swimming desperately under the ice of $5 a share trying to find its way back up.

What ostensibly triggered the selloff was a Dow Jones headline (take that, FT!) saying the EU finance ministers had failed to agree to raising the ESM/EFSF 500-billion euro joint ceiling.

As Peter Boockvar at Miller Tabak correctly pointed out, this is ancient news.

But headline-reading robots that buy and sell stocks when no humans are around apparently don't read publication dates.

Beyond that, though, disappointing comments earlier from Mario Draghi and the beat-down in financials were more than enough to justify a down day.

The Dow ended down 100 points at 11766, the S&P fell 1.2% to 1205, and the Nasdaq lost 1.3% to 2523.

Bank of America ultimately could not claw its way out of the ice and ended one air bubble below, at $4.99. That should set up an interesting day tomorrow.

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