Market Wrap: Gold Bug Gets Sick; Chevron Booted by Brazil; Merkel Shuttin' it Down; The Worlds Fastest Camera

Market wrap-up for December 14th

End of the Day: Dow Jones down 131.5 to 11,823.48; Nasdaq down 40.0 to 2,539.31; S&P 500 down 13.9 to 1,211.82

The following is a brief summary of events moving markets today:

• Where's the letter then, Brazil!?: Reports suggested the prosecutor's office in Campos, Rio de Janeiro said it wants Chevron (NYSE: CVX) and Transocean (NYSE: RIG) to cease operations in Brazil.
  
  After hours, Chevron issued a statement saying it responded responsibly to the events at Frade Field. Chevron also said it has not received anything formal notice, which isn't to say that it won't receive something formal.
  
  
• Seriously, someone check Merkel's portfolio: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is at it again. Today, Merkel restated her position that eurozone bonds were not a way for Europe to come out of the crisis, and she still doesn't want to lift the cap on the €500 billion bailout.
  
  
• Wednesdays, amirite? Gold took a hard dive Wednesday right along with markets, and if you said that three months ago, you'd be labeled crazy. February 2012 contracts traded down $92.60 to $1,570.50. Gold started the month around the $1,750 level. Click here for more color.
  
  
• Speaking of Wednesdays: First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) shares got slammed Wednesday, following cut guidance from the company. Shares ended the session down 21 percent after it cut its fiscal 2011 sales outlook from a range of $3.0-$3.3 billion to $2.8-$2.9 billion. EPS moved from $6.50-$7.50 to $5.75-$6.00. The Street had previously been expecting revs of $3.2 billion and EPS of $6.88.
  
  
• Divide, and conquer: After the market closed Tuesday, Avon Products (NYSE: AVP) said it will separate the roles of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer starting in 2012. The company said that Andrea Jung, Avon's Chairman and CEO, will be named Executive Chairman, and that a committee of the Board of Directors will work with Jung to undertake an external search for a Chief Executive Officer.
  
  Jung was named CEO of Avon in 1999
  
  
• Admittedly, it would be a boring film: MIT scientists and researchers put together a mind-boggling device: a camera capable of shooting at one-trillion frames per second. Initially, that may not sound impressive, but as Wired Magazine put it: "One trillion seconds is over 31,688 years. So if you shot one second of footage on this camera, and played it back at 30fps, it’d still take you over 1,000 years to watch it."

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