Judge's Gavel Slams Down on 'Victimized' Speculators

Index	Close	Change
Dow	9142.84	+101.89
S&P 500	993.76	+11.44
Nasdaq Composite	1678.77	+38.64
Nasdaq 100	1245.78	+28.41
Russell 2000	458.90	+9.73
Semiconductor Index (SOX)	375.29	+9.19
Bank Index	875.24	+6.69
Amex Gold Bugs Index	154.68	+0.46
Dow Transports	2433.27	+16.97
Dow Utilities	251.49	+1.27
NYSE advance-decline	+1,813	+1,101
Nikkei 225	9592.24	+313.75
10-year Treasury Bond	3.54%	-0.013

Editor's note: This column, which reflects market activity from the day before, originally appeared July 2 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.

Last night, Japan and much of Asia were up about 3%. Once again, Japanese government bonds traded lower, with the 10-year now up to about 91 basis points. As we strolled in for business this morning, Europe was up 1.5% to 2%, though interestingly, our futures were not much higher. Tech was the early-going leader, apparently on the back of a dead-fish upgrade of Microsoft(MSFT Quote). I didn't even bother to check out the rationalization for the recommendation, because who cares? I do note that there are a lot of people lathered up about Microsoft's chart formation, so for all I know, that's what really drove the recommendation.

Sunset for a Spending Heyday: Meanwhile, I would like to reprise some noteworthy comments by Bill Gates, from an interview yesterday in USA Today. In essence, they underscore the remarks by technology insiders that I have been sharing recently. He told the paper: "Capital spending on IT gear is unlikely in my lifetime to ever achieve the levels that it saw in the late 1990s. . . . We assume that [future] IT spending won't be all that different than it is today. . . . . We are not seeing any sort of substantial upturn at this stage."

So, the expectations for the second half are clearly enormous, given that nothing has really started to perk up just yet. And yet, the early going saw folks chasing tech and, to a lesser degree, biotech. Housing, however, was slightly under pressure. As the day wore on, it was just a steady grind upward, such that the market closed on the highs, for all intents and purposes. A glance at the box scores shows that we were basically back to the pattern of speculative darlings doing the best, with Internet stocks, biotech stocks, and SOX stocks all leading the charge. The housing stocks swung into gear, up firmly as well. In essence, a good time was had by all....