Leaders Index 1-13

The market sold off at the open yesterday on news of the S&P downgrade of many European countries, including France. This will make it difficult for EU wide bonds to maintain a triple A rating. Volume was mixed, slightly lower on the Nasd and higher on the NYSE. This produced a distribution day on the New York averages. The interesting thing is what the market did next. It spent the rest of the day working it's way higher, recovering a big part of the early losses and closing near the highs if the day. The market's reaction to news is usually more important than the news itself. The market is responding better to bad news lately than it has in the recent past. A few months ago I think news like this would have caused a much larger sell off than it did yesterday. Leading stocks were mixed yesterday with the leaders index about flat(down .01%) on lower volume. We still don't have much real leadership worth getting excited about, but it is better than it was a few weeks ago. Jerry