It sometimes is a small, unpredicted event that moves markets. Today it was Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank. He unexpectedly left a meeting in Australia to attend special meeting of European leaders to address the region's economy.

That was the trigger that shot off a turnaround in world markets. Stocks and commodities are trading higher in anticipation that the Greek sovereign debt problem will be dealt with. The U.S. market, just opened, did it with a bang as the Dow industrials more than recovered its triple digit loss from Monday to be back above the 10,000 mark.

This morning the big news of the day was the drubbing of European stock markets as fear spread throughout the region. Fear was generated by concern that some European countries could default on their sovereign debt. Among them are Greece, Spain, and Portugal.

Greece's budget gap is 12.7% of GDP Greece has to slash spending and may need IMF assistance.

Investors sold investment deemed risky such as commodities, gold and stocks and moved their money into bonds. This started a selling frenzy in commodities with oil falling $3.14 per barrel to $73.14 per barrel. Brent crude fell $3.79 per barrel to $72.13 per barrel.

Royal Dutch Shell's (RDS.A) profit fell a whopping 75% in the fourth quarter. Earnings came in at $1.18 billion.

Shell's profit margins were hit by slower fuel demand caused by the worldwide recession. There were also increased costs from refinery start ups in the Middle East and Asia.

Unfortunately, profit on a dollar basis dropped over 20%. And higher oil prices are making things difficult at the refinery stage. While the earnings beat is good, these elements to the story must be given ample consideration.

Is the world running on stimulus money or is there real demand for basic commodities?

What has been happening is that underdeveloped countries have been using stimulus money to stockpile raw commodities. Now there is a surplus. This, in turn, has led to a fall-off in commodity prices.

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U.S. stocks hit a new 15-month high Tuesday as IBM led tech stocks higher ahead of its earnings report late Tuesday, and health-care shares rose as the health care and insurance reforms hung in the balance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 115 points, or 1.1%, the S&P 500 rose 14 points, or 1.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 32 points, or 1.4%.