Dow Watch: Nothing Wrong Here

It's Not All Bad

(At 12:10 p.m. EDT)

This market sure has a lot going against it these days. I don't want to be too much of a drag, but let's review a few of the more recent downers.

We'll start with the big rally in the past two months. Great rebound. Still, we have to wonder how much longer that can go. As of last Friday, the Dow was up some 30% since March 9.

Then we have more stock offerings every day. Anybody not doing a secondary?

Economic data, generally speaking, haven't been much to cheer about, even if they're of the less-bad variety. The latest included word that jobless claims were up again, staying well above 600,000.

Plus, we hear that Washington is looking at greater control on bank pay, and not just for aid recipients. Wall Street doesn't care much for that. Not sure any of us should want to go too far in that direction.

If that's not enough, we have talk that Uncle Sam might lose that long-held and highly coveted triple-A rating. Say it ain't so.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner for economics, is continuing his rain-on-the parade tour. From Bloomberg: "The world as a whole looks quite a lot like Japan during its lost decade. I am very optimistic about the world in, let's say, 2030; it's the next ten years or so that have me worried."

Seriously? 2030? Fine, let's just throw in the towel on the next 10 years. Or so.

The things I've mentioned here are only a handful of the bad that remains out there. Plenty ails this economy, no doubt about it. So it was hardly a surprise when futures were indicating ahead of the open this morning that Wednesday's selloff would continue.