U.S. stocks fell Wednesday as a tired market simply stopped reacting to relatively benign news.  This along with comments from Ben Bernanke that a new round of quantitative easing was perhaps not on the table (at least immediately) hurt risk assets, strengthened the U.S. dollar, and hit precious metals.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday offered a tempered view of the U.S. economy, pouring cold water on the notion that recent upbeat signs herald a stronger recovery.  Bernanke told Congress that unless growth accelerated, the unacceptably high U.S. unemployment rate would not keep dropping.  But he stopped short of signaling further Fed bond purchases, dashing the hopes of some traders in financial markets who were betting on more monetary stimulus.

This one the same day that the ECB unleashed another massive round of funds to European banks.  The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, while the NASDAQ, after hitting an intraday peak of 3000 for the first time since the year 2000, fell 0.7%.   Volume across the indexes increasing substantially, with levels not seen since December 16th.

• The Federal Reserve said the U.S. economy expanded modestly in January through mid-February as hiring picked up a bit across several districts.  The U.S. central bank's Beige Book released on Wednesday had much the same cautiously upbeat tone as the previous report, and pointed to some improvement even in the battered housing sector.
• "Residential real estate market conditions improved somewhat in most districts," the report, an anecdotal report on business activity, said. "Hiring increased slightly across several districts."  Manufacturing appeared to be a bright spot, with many of the Fed's 12 regional districts reporting rises in new orders, shipments or production, and several pointing to more robust investment spending.
• Chicago said its measure of manufacturing in the Midwest region rose to a 10-month high of 64 in February from 60.2 in January.  Activity was boosted by a jump in new orders to a near one-year high and a backlog build-up.

The price of gold plunged $77 per ounce, the biggest one-day drop since September, as traders dialed back their expectations that the dollar would be weakened by another round of economic stimulus from the Fed. Gold settled at $1,711.30 an ounce.   Silver also fell sharply, giving up $2.563 an ounce, or 6.9%, to settle at $34.642 an ounce.  Crude oil rose 52 cents to settle at $107.07 a barrel.

Germany's DAX closed 0.5% lower while the CAC-40 in France lost almost 0.1%. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares ended 1.0 percent lower.

• The European Central Bank's second offering of unlimited low-interest loans was gobbled up Wednesday by 800 banks, who borrowed euro529.5 billion ($712.4 billion). More than euro1 trillion has been pumped into Europe's financial system in this way in just over two months.  The three-year ECB loans, given against collateral such as bonds or other securities, cost banks 1 percent.
• Germany's jobless rate increased to 7.4 percent in February.

China's market fell 1% while Japan was fractionally lower.