Awaiting Alan, Shares Stall

Monday's slow trading ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony at midweek might spark a minor offshoot to the old rule "Don't fight the Fed." That is, don't fight anybody when the Fed is offstage.

With little consensus about what the maestro will say in his Congressional speech, or even whether he'll lean toward a signal of faster, slower or the expected pace of rate hikes to come, the markets were pretty listless on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 5 points to 10,791.13, falling from the 2005 high set on Friday.

The S&P 500 gained less than 0.1% to 1206.14, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.3% to 2082.91. Losses in AIG (AIG Quote), which is allegedly subject to additional regulatory scrutiny, and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote) held back the Dow. AIG lost 2.2%, and H-P fell 2.5%.

The "kinda, sorta" bidding war over MCI (MCIP Quote) between local phone giants Verizon (VZ Quote) and Qwest Communications (Q Quote) never really got off the ground. MCI took Verizon's $6.75 billion offer over Qwest's $7.3 billion, and all three stocks fell. MCI lost lost 4%, Verizon dropped 0.3%, and left-at-the-altar Qwest fell 4%.

Breadth was modestly positive on the New York Stock Exchange and just about even on the Nasdaq. Volume was extremely low, with less than 1.3 billion shares changing hands on the Big Board -- the lowest this year -- and about 1.6 billion on the Nasdaq. Declining volume can be seen as a sign of market weakness, but in this case it seems more as though investors are giving Greenspan a wide berth amid a lack of news.

SOX Appeal

Any number of analysts are looking not to the stars for guidance but to the Philadelphia Exchange's Semiconductor Index, a.k.a. the SOX, which was up 0.2% on Monday.

The index peaked last January ahead of the market and bottom in September presaging the broader market's fourth-quarter surge. The SOX started trending down in December, hitting bottom in late January. But of late it's been a relatively strong performer, up 14% at Monday's close from its Jan. 24 closing low of 383.04. The S&P is up just under 4% over the same period.