Market Holds Its Ground

We should have been down huge today. We declared a trade war against China on Friday night. Out of nowhere. To save a couple of thousand jobs at some tire plants, an industry that was gutted in part because of high costs of workers and ridiculous leverage by the tire makers. No clean hands on either side.

Then the Chinese come back with a really good case: our chicken industry, which has a wage structure that I believe could be much lower than the Chinese because of the well-known illegal-worker status of the industry.

Yet, the market's hardly down. That's crazy.

We should be hammered.

Some of that is a recognition that the president's gambit could be one-off. Some of it is that the fundamentals are just plain too strong to be denied. Some of it is mutual fund Monday, where people simply want the exposure.

At the opening, I figured that Google (GOOG - commentary - Trade Now) would be down 10. We got a down 5. Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) looked awful; it is higher. Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Trade Now) and Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Trade Now) were tanking; now RIMM is up and Amazon has stabilized. Oracle (ORCL - commentary - Trade Now) is down only pennies. Cisco (CSCO - commentary - Trade Now) is the outlier, down hard. Probably a buy.

The banks? Glancing blows for a group that everyone is very worried about. I like them. I think that we are still in biding-time mode until we get the numbers, and I like Citigroup (C - commentary - Trade Now) under $4.50. Fifth Third (FITB - commentary - Trade Now) and Huntington Bancshares (HBAN - commentary - Trade Now) seem like great opportunities here.

We see drug stocks on the move, Abbott Laboratories (ABT - commentary - Trade Now) is a standout -- 11 times next year's earnings it should be. The muted reaction to Eli Lilly's (LLY - commentary - Trade Now) great restructuring is probably too muted!

In the meantime, the rally in Coke.

Sure, the market's not on fire.

But it should be burning up.

That's an important takeaway. And it should not be lost even if the market drifts down for the rest of the day.

Random musings: I can't believe the panning the president is getting. He didn't do anything other than say we need to be prudent. He did not talk about how banks are safer and better. Surprising. Way-off speech for its negativity.

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