Minds Too Narrow, Not the Market

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You hear it everywhere, in our columns, on television, in newspapers, in magazines: The market's too narrow. Not enough stuff is working. You can't have a great market with just a couple of sectors generating the enthusiasm.

I have heard it all before. It's code for: "I am in the wrong stocks and I am not going to learn those new stocks that are working so well." It's a mask for laziness or fear, because the simple truth is that by the time the groups that are moving get where they have to go, they are plenty big enough and need to be owned.

I am seeing fabulous activity in the industrials, the chemicals, the forest products and the minerals. I have talked and written endlessly about these oils. Since when do the steels not count? Oh, and what's the matter with going overseas a bit, or to Canada or Mexico, robust bull markets that have taken up pretty near everything?

And what happens if the brokers catch another leg up? I think a lot of the moaning about the market has to do with the seeming "lost" leadership of stocks like Goldman SachsGS and Morgan StanleyMWD. That could change on a dime.

What truly has happened is a remarkable breakdown in any of the techs. The semiconductors are stalled out, despite good earnings from Texas InstrumentsTXN and IntelINTC. The software sector seems to come alive with pleasure a couple of times a month and then just gets obliterated. Networking seems like something that's almost old-fashioned; the comparison of the builders of the now-completed Net infrastructure to the builders of the Interstate Highway System makes all the sense in the world to me.

In fact, there's AppleAAPL.

And there's nothing else. Not even Yahoo!YHOO, although I think that stock's just biding its time.