Bubble Rewrites 'Rules' on Recession/Recovery

Index	Close	Change
Dow	9194.24	+35.79
S&P 500	988.60	+0.49
Nasdaq Composite	1719.15	+13.05
Nasdaq 100	1268.46	+10.83
Russell 2000	466.14	+2.14
Semiconductor Index (SOX)	393.78	+5.59
Bank Index	896.15	+0.05
Amex Gold Bugs Index	159.29	+9.65
Dow Transports	2572.16	-4.21
Dow Utilities	235.84	-2.08
NYSE advance-decline	+192	-195
Nikkei 225	9615.34	+129.37
10-year Treasury Bond	4.10%	-0.048

Editor's note: This column, which reflects market activity from the day before, originally appeared July 23 on RealMoney.com. To sign up for RealMoney, where you can read Bill Fleckenstein's commentary every day, please click here for a free trial.

Given yesterday's news that U.S. forces bagged the yester-day brothers, Ud- and Qu-, the world equity markets were rather tepid last night, and likewise our stock-index futures. No sooner had our casino opened for business than it was sold, such that within a couple hours, the S&P was down about 0.5%. Speculation helped the Nasdaq do a little better, with Amazon(AMZN Quote) leading the upside charge for over 10%, thanks to its abracadabra before-expenses "great quarter." Most of tech piggybacked modestly green, but little else that I saw gained much traction in the early going.

Re: The Flying Pig, a Dead Fish Beats a Dead Horse: After the morning swoon, the market took off about midday, then headed for the highs of the day, which is where it closed. Housing stocks were unable to bounce on the bounce in bonds (described below), but elsewhere, speculation was the order of the day, particularly in Internet and SOX land.

Micron Technology(MU Quote), the flying pig, was at it again, as our favorite dead fish from yesterday raised his estimate. Now Micron will stop losing money sooner than he had expected. His reasons are the same spurious ones that have perennially led people to be wrong about Micron and DRAM prices, so there's no point in reprising them.

However, I will share with folks some data from NPD Intellect that illustrate how illusory the fabled pickup in PCs this spring was (thanks to a friend who subscribes to the service for passing this on): Total PC growth for the first two weeks in July was up 5% year over year, compared with a 17% year-over-year gain in June, and a 28% year-over-year gain in May. Looking at notebooks is even more interesting, as the gain for July was 8%, compared with 48% in June and 83% in May. That big number in May, for folks who don't follow this closely, was related to the hoopla surrounding the Centrino, which has now fizzled. Desktop growth picked up a little in July, to up 4%, year-over-year, vs. 2% in June and 1% in May. The difference between all of those desktop numbers is essentially noise, in my opinion.