Looks like someone did a drive-by into the 11AM fixing and through a whole bunch of 1.31 barriers, which exacerbated matters.
It may not be enough for some, but the ECB is loosening policy, with more certain to come. The currency is supposed to go down when this happens. This is a good thing for the continent. Old habits die hard, but the euro/"risk on" correlation will die in the coming months.
Main reasons are the German decision to pursue austerity (which will cause street riots, collapse of governments etc), UK veto (prevents the 26 using EU institutions to co-ordinate their economic response), and the almost inevitable ECB QE in 2012 (just like they caved eventually in 2008). I doubt Greece will leave the Euro - public opinion is against it and government opinion is also against it, it would be a legal minefield, and their financial sector and much of their industry would go bust overnight.
IMO China is a bear point. They own lots of Euros and have been steady price-insensitive (and fundamentals-blind) buyers, propping up the exchange rate. Eventually, even dumb foreign bureaucrats are going to realise that the Euro is toast, at which point they will either i) stop buying until the price crashes (this buying strike will accelerate the decline) or ii) panic and sell out. Both are very bearish developments. I can't think of any reasons why China would look at the Euro right now and say "You know what, it's in our strategic interests to start buying even more Euros". Once things get shaky, they will buy dollars like everyone else. This China/Euro thing reminds me of the sovereign wealth funds in 2007 and 2008 - they were long and hopelessly wrong, but some people actually thought the market wouldn't go down just because a few tens of billions were being spunked into oblivion by clueless foreign pen-pushing apparatchiks. Since retail is an irrelevancy in FX, foreign institutional 3rd world money is the dumb money.
Euro below $1.30. Perfect LoBogala for the euro in 2011. http://finviz.com/forex_charts.ashx?t=EURUSD&tf=d1
Precious ****ls are getting hit hard here, silver back under $30. They are far weaker than even the sickly Euro, so this is an independent move in the ****ls. Maybe because of the German commitment to EU-wide austerity, and the lack of QE noises from the ECB? If PMs keeping going down, you could see a tidal wave of selling from retail longs. There are still a lot of gold and silver bulls out there, we have had 11 consecutive up years in gold, and silver was at bubble highs earlier this year, and in the mid 40s even 3 months ago. I am wondering if 2011/12 could be the 1975 of the gold bull market, the year where the ****l has a serious collapse to shake out all but the most die hard longs. Certainly, if the EU goes into a hard-currency depression, with the ECB steadfastly refusing to print, and a market panic causes liquidation of speculative holdings, you could get a gold/silver crash a bit like happened in September, or in late 2008. P.S. Why is ET censoring the word 'm e t a l'?