Today, Friday, Jan 16, the Dow closed up 68 points after shedding a few hundred points this week.
It is very clear now, to me at least, that the Dow is following bailouts. It drops when banks and such start crying for more bailouts, and rises when they get their bailouts.
The Dow is competely ignoring the larger more serious picture of impending large retail bankruptices, hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost, the collapsing commercial real estate market, etc.
Yep.
It's being doing that since this crisis broke. It crumbled when TARP I was rejected by the Senate and it shot up when TARP II was finally passed.
That effectively ended any lingering interest I had in the Dow. Nothing I've seen since has changed my mind.