Tasked with dragging the U.S. stock market higher all by itself, Google could not quite get the job done yesterday. Although the stock ended the session with a nearly $15 gain, preventing Nasdaq-based indexes from falling, the Industrial Average went its separate way, closing with a 78-point loss. Given that the stock market's illusion of strength is all that is keeping the U.S. economy from going over the edge, it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Google's continuing bluster. For, as long as Google shares remain capable of vaulting $15 in a day, the Nasdaq indices of which the stock is a key component cannot get hurt too badly. And as long as the Nasdaq can't get hurt too badly, it will be that much harder for the Dow and S&P to trigger off an avalanche That is not to say that the broad averages can't continue to rack up appalling breadth divergences. That's a particularly worrisome technical aspect of the current bull cycle, and it is only going to get worse as fewer and fewer stocks participate in increasingly ginned-up rallies. But because it takes only a handful of ebullient stocks to ward off a complete meltdown, the danger of this occurring will remain lower than if there were no tech-sector mirage to focus on. Even so, bulls could hardly be thrilled with yesterday's broad weakness, since it occurred with positive cyclical influences almost at red-line. We are referring to the October-November transition period, about which our colleague Jason Goepfert of SentimenTrader.com recently had this to say: '�we'll [soon] be heading into a period of notable seasonality which is remarkably positive. Holding the S&P 500 during the last three days of October through the first three days of November has given a positive return during every one of
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