A few more days like yesterday and you can look for me in my hula skirt in Times Square next winter. I'd promised to dance the hula if the Dow failed to plummet exactly 360 points to a Hidden Pivot target, and soon. My bearishness was based on the fact that stocks did not seem to be getting much lift from falling oil prices. However, what happened next stood this logic on its ear. With crude quotes surging to one of their biggest one-day gains in history, stocks rose sharply as well, led by a 214-point gain in the Dow Industrials. At least I had one thing right in yesterday's commentary when I wrote that 'no manifestation of rational human behavior could be farther from observable reality than the stock market.' How else to explain such exuberant behavior when soaring energy quotes were once again threatening to squash the U.S. economy, bankrupt the airlines and auto manufacturers, and push up the price of nearly everything we consume? For the stock market to seemingly celebrate the increasing likelihood of this was more than merely absurd, it was obscene. As always, whenever I am mystified by investor behavior, I browse The Wall Street Journal's end-of-day wrap-up to see what my poor, underappreciated colleague, Peter McKay, had to say. He explained it as follows: 'Stocks recouped most of their recent losses Thursday amid a welcome round of corporate deal making and strong reports on retail sales, which outweighed an eye-popping surge in crude prices.' So that's it! I was beginning to think I'd missed news of a cure for cancer, or a breakthrough in cold fusion technology, or even a conciliatory statement from bin Laden to the effect that Islamists have decided to work with the West to help bring greater harmony and
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