Ebb and Flow Ends With Rising Tide

"I'm just sitting here watching the battle between light and dark," Raymond James' chief equity strategist Jeff Saut quipped Thursday when I asked how he's doing.

Light and dark battled it out on several fronts Thursday. Dark seemed to be winning when we spoke around 2:00 p.m. EDT, but light won the day -- at least in the major stock market indices.

That said, tensions between Iran and the West escalated, rather than moving toward a peaceful resolution. The U.S. Senate passed a war-spending bill that puts the legislative branch on a collision course with President Bush, who has threatened to veto any bill that includes a deadline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. Oil closed up another $1.95, or 3%, to $66.03 per barrel. ...