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"Three-card Monty", that's what drove prices up today.  It was a game of
misdirection and deceit.  The OTC was up and the DJIA was unchanged.
The S&P, "the market", was up modestly but volume sank to -5% below
average.  Some news-bots suggested it was a "follow-thru" of Friday's
action.  Rubbish!  RUBBISH, I say!  "Higher prices, lower volume",
that's a Bearish signal.  The main news was a couple mergers.  Was that
good news?

What they would have us believe is that two companies can be run with
one corporate support structure.  "We're eliminating one 'back-office'."
It's more of the "cost cutting" mantra.  After decades of cost cutting
and "heirarchy pyramid flattening" which major corporation in America
has ANY surplus capacity in it's "back-office" operations?  A lot of
jobs that need to get done, aren't going to get done.  Is that a good
thing?  How does that profit the company in the long term?

They'd have us believe they're going to make money by firing people?
Translation: "We can't add to top-line growth, so we're going to devour
ourselves internally to make the bottom-line look good."  How is this
going to contribute to growth in the future?  It's really an admission
of the way the Street's short term bottom-line outlook is perverting
good business management, an admission of failure.

"No man is an island, entire unto himself."

Is it good for the economy?  "We're not buying the economy, we're buying
stocks in individual companies."  Unemployment isn't good for the
economy, and it isn't good for companies in general or the market and
the economy as a whole.  If there's one thing I've seen consistently is
that tall, skinny rallies by the indices which are not supported by
concommitant rallies in the broad market are doomed to failure.  That's
what this amounts to.

"Therefore, seek not to know for whom the bell tolls."

This is one of those situations when the Street aphorism, "Buy on the
rumor, sell on the news", holds.  The only money to be made here is by
the investment bankers, and the Street ginning up excitement on Main
Street so they can unload their stock on us.  If you got 'em, SELL 'EM!
Mergers are a whole lot harder to pull off successfully and profit from
than your broker would have you believe!  I learned that lesson the
hard way on the Kroger-Fred Meyer merger.

And this ISN'T improving my mood about the market!

 Price    Vola-    Momen-   Volume   Oscil-   Summ.
 Change   tility   tum               lator    Index
 -__+     -__+     -__+     -__+     -__+     -__+

 __>_     _     __>_     ___<     03/01
 _|__     __     _|__     ___<     03/02
 __|_     _     _|__     ___<     03/03
 __>_     _|__     __|_     __>_     __>_     ___|     03/04
 __>_     _>__     __|_     _|__     __>_     ___|     03/07

Timing Signals:  I don't use or recommend timing signals, but they're
fun to watch.  If I did though, well, I might use something like this.
(Be warned!!  It tends to whipsaw around signal points!)

Last Signal: BUY        Date:  02/24/05 S&P:    1200
Winner or Loser:  tbd                   By:     tbd

See my market tracking charts for '03-'04 and my investment strategy
study at my website(s):
http://www.xprt.net/~pgrogers/Pers.html
http://www.angelfire.com/or/paulrogers/Pers.html
http://www.geocities.com/paulgrogers/Pers.html



Paul Rogers, paulgrogers{at}yahoo.com                       -o)
http://www.angelfire.com/or/paulrogers                   /\\
Rogers' Second Law: Everything you do communicates.     _\_V

... Sturgeon's Law: 95% of everything is crap.
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