Stone Ground!

• The market sold off today.  Something to be worried about?   I did mention last week that I had the sell signal on SMH, but in a light volume week it's hard to read much into it.  I got a sell on a few financials I follow on friday, but again, same light-volume conclusion.  Now we'll see if we continue to get more topping action, or if we have the month-end move up with 401k contributions hitting.  I don't think the bull market is over with, though.  


• Have you ever bought "stone ground" chips that you buy at a specialty store?  I think I'm chomping on stones.  These chips are supposed to be healthier, or at least you feel that way because of the label.  They do have higher fiber, and I bought the no salt kind.   These ones I have are under 33% fat, which still is high fat to me.  But I was feeling like some chips and I got suckered on the label.  "Hmm, stone ground.  Must be healthy."


• Ugh.  Now I remember what I don't like about winter.  I only worked a few hours today, and left early.  Traffic is all mucked up on the freeways.  I'm not sure why; it was never really evident.  Just gridlock at 3pm.


• The Big Picture says Don't Believe the Hype regarding retail sales over the long weekend.  He says folks are reporting a brisk sales weekend.  But I've been watching the tube, and I keep hearing about "disappointing" sales in everything except tech.  Another interesting tidbit is that the comment we note that retailers engaged in much more aggressive discounting when compared with last year’s holiday season.  Now, weren't folks trying to tell us that higher energy prices were inflationary?  What is this discounting stuff?  Of course, you know that higher energy prices aren't inflationary, but I'm trying to bring everybody up to speed.  More proof right there.  I'm not going to quibble about a percent this way or that way on holiday sales.  It looks neither blistering or disappointing.


• I don't have an iPod yet, and still use a Treo to serve as an all-in-one device.  So I use iPodder for Podcasts, and transfer things to my 1 gig flash card for road trips or jogging.  I ran into somebody who has the iPod and uses iTunes to do the same thing, and we had an interesting conversation.  We were talking about the same things, but in different languages.  Kind of funny.


• Another Market Myth Busted over at BlogginWallStreet.  Mark Mahorney asks, Has the housing market really been the major consumer catalyst in recent years? Maybe not... I agree with him on this.  Lots of good info in this one, so check it out.


• I watched Fox's Bulls and Bears on saturday morning, all but one were bearish.  Bulls and Bears is my favorite of the Fox business block, but I also try to catch Neil Cavuto's show.