Stocks are getting smoked

It's a fifth straight day of weakness on Wall Street.

Near 9:38 a.m. ET, the Dow was down 172 points, the S&P 500 was down 42 points, and the Nasdaq was up 17 points. The three indexes were down nearly 1%, and its a 5th straight down day on Wall Street.

Caterpillar had some grim news this morning: The industrial giant is laying off 10,000 people because of what it calls "a convergence of challenging marketplace conditions in key regions and industry sectors - namely in mining and energy." As a bellwether for China's and the global economy, this kind of language does not bode well.

Caterpillar's three-month rolling sales figures have been on the decline for 33 months. Its stock opened down 7%, and its decline subtracted about 30 points from the Dow.

We got some economic data this morning. Initial jobless claims rose less than expected last week, by 3,000 to 267,000. And, durable goods orders fell 2%, while "core" durable goods orders fell 0.2% in August.

New home sales numbers are due at 10:00 a.m. ET.

But the most anticipated event is Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen's speech at 5:00 p.m. ET. She will be speaking on inflation at the University of Massachusetts exactly a week after the FOMC left interest rates unchanged, citing sluggish inflation and global economic concerns.

Meanwhile, the same theme that has recently plagued markets continues, and that is uncertainty.

Over in Europe, the emissions scandal deepened overnight as we learned via a German media report that BMW's X3 Xdrive 20d exceeds regulatory standards by 11 times. The company denied the report, and its stock fell by as much as 8%.

This comes one day after Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned following his admission that the company cheated diesel emission rules. Its shares were all over the place in trading, rallying 8% in Frankfurt before giving back all the gains.

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