If we had to title a book describing the market environment of the past few months it would be appropriately entitled "A Market of Complacency". Today for the first time much of that complacency was washed away as fear took its place front and center:

Click to enlarge

VIX (daily)

VIX_Daily_2.3.2014

E-mini S&P futures (hourly)

ES_hourly_2.3.2014

30-Year Treasury Bond Futures (4-hour)

ZB_4-hour

This sentiment survey from Yahoo Finance perfectly illustrates the sentiment backdrop which contributed to today's equity market swoon:

Yahoo_Survey

This is not the sort of market sentiment which bottoms are made of. While I'm sure that today's 300+ point down day for the Dow Jones put a sizable dent in the bullish contingent, my intuition tells that there is more blood letting to come before any appreciable bounce in equities takes place.