Selling in stock land... Our market initially opened firmer this morning
                    when Intel (INTC) did not preannounce, as there had been rumors late
                    yesterday that it would. We tried to mount a rally that lasted about a half
                    an hour. Some stocks opened about $2 or $3 higher and quickly got
                    slammed. Intel traded up to $4 higher, Dell (DELL) was a buck and a half
                    higher and some of the selected semiconductor stocks were two and three
                    bucks higher - and within a half an hour they got sold. The bonds tried to
                    open higher and they got sold, too. Stocks and bonds kind of went down
                    together, although obviously there was more of an undertow in stock land. 

                    Rally revives futures ... Then a couple of hours into the day we had a
                    rally that returned us to about where we had started the day, at least in
                    terms of the S&P, and that dragged stocks back up. We sold off and
                    made a new low for the day with about a half an hour to go. Then -
                    surprise, surprise - yet again we had an epic rally in the S&P futures late in
                    the day, and the bulls were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat
                    one more time. All of this was done with the bonds closing on their low of
                    the day, down almost a dollar and having broken the previous closing low
                    established last week. The long bond now has a yield over 5.70. 

                    Early on we got underneath the magic 1225 number in the S&P and we
                    went under again late in the day, but it didn't seem to matter because we
                    had the last-hour ramp job. I'm not quite sure how this is able to occur
                    time and time again, especially given the fact the advance-decline line was
                    poor and the volume wasn't particularly great. 

                 I'm surmising that as money flows out of tech, mutual fund managers are
                    taking the proceeds and purchasing S&Ps. I guess they figure, "What the
                    heck, we get graded against the S&P, we're selling our techs, we might as
                    well just buy S&Ps." Nobody who buys S&Ps and sticks them in the fund
                    wants tracking errors, so they buy them all in the last little while. And it
                    puts a good face on things - it makes everything look like it's hunky-dory,
                 although nothing could be further from the truth. 

                    Under suspicion... Meanwhile, about six stocks today had outsized gains
                    that I thought were rather unusual, not counting Intel. (Intel was up about
                    $5 in the end but its stock has been slammed pretty hard, so arguably it
                    was due for a bounce.) But lo and behold, Dell picked up its head and
                    gained $3, Texas Instruments (TXN) was up $5, Maxim (MXIM) was up
                    $2, Linear Tech (LLTC) was up a buck and a half (although it had been
                    up more). Amazon (AMZN) was up two and a half and Sun Micro
                    (SUNW) gained over $3. These things had a different feel to them, but
                    when I stopped to look, the Janus organization was either the largest
                    shareholder or in the top three or four of all of these stocks. 

                    This doesn't mean that any muscle is being applied to certain stocks, but
                    sometimes we find that companies that have very concentrated positions in
                    names are able to walk them up when they want to. And maybe a lot of
                    other people are keen on these names because these are the very best
                    names that you could possibly want to buy. I just find it suspicious. It
                    reminds me of late 1995 when there was a certain amount of tape painting
                    going on at Fidelity and there was a lot of unusual action in certain groups
                    of stocks. I'm not saying anything's going on for sure - I just thought it was
                    rather interesting and figured the folks at home would want to know about
                    it. 

                    By the way, it's my personal opinion that if ever there were a mutual fund
                    headed for disaster, it's got to be the Janus 20. With the kind of
                    concentrations and names it has, there won't be any back door on that
                    thing when it goes down. To this point it's been a great ride, I'm sure. 

                    Back to banks... Bank stocks initially were under a little bit of pressure,
                    but nothing like technology. I think money is continuing to flow into
                    anything but tech at the moment. I would point out that with all the
                    machinations going on in the currencies and the fixed income markets
                    around the globe, these banks are going to vulnerable yet again. I don't
                    think they've ever totally 'fessed up on all the derivative exposure, but we'll
                    save that topic for another day as well.