On Thursday President Obama introduced some new rules to prevent a return to the "old practices" that led to the financial meltdown.

Although they are complex the Street is largely focused on two major points:

They are:
- Banks would be prevented from owning, investing in or sponsoring a hedge fund or private equity fund.

- Banks would be barred from proprietary trading operations, unrelated to serving customers, for their own profit.


(Proprietary trading refers to a firm making bets on financial markets with its own money, rather than executing a trade for a client – and can be enormously profitable.)


Investors immediately crushed big bank stocks but the question is why? Some investors interpret the sell-off as a response to uncertainty.


“Can you be comfortable owning financials with so many unknowns? Personally, I would not want to own them until I understood what the new rules of the road,” says veteran trader Kaminsky in response to owning Goldman shares.


Others see the sell-off very differently. People like Lee Markowitz of Continental Capital Advisors thinks bears seized the moment – and used the catalyst to begin a long-awaited correction.


"We think stocks have been ripe for a fall," said Markowitz in a Reuters interview. "If some of these banks start to sell, the credit-induced rally of the past 10 months is over and is about to have a pretty bearish reversal."

from CNBC FAST MONEY

Were the markets overdue for a correction?  If Obama hadn't provided this catalyst would something else have taken them lower?