Yahoo and Intel were getting shaken down in after-hours trading on Tuesday, presumably by the kind of arse bandits who would be out stealing little old ladies’ handbags if trading stocks were not so lucrative. Intel’s earnings came in a whopping three cents below expectations and Yahoo’s numbers were actually pretty good, so we should hardly have been surprised to see widows, orphans and pensioners stampeding last evening to ditch their shares in two of America’s best companies. Will these two stocks, along with the broad averages, recoup their losses shortly after this morning’s opening? Does it rain in Indianapolis?

What better time to broach the theory that the Dow Industrials are bound for new all-time highs? I mentioned this possibility on a paid-subscriber page the other day, but it’s time to go public with it. My hunch about this is purely intuitive, resting as it does on hearsay. First, nearly every competent technician I know sees the market topping here. Second, global liquidity seems far too high right now to allow speculation, even the wantonly reckless kind, to dry up. Here’s a corroborating note from our friend Erich Simon that fleshes out the case in a stream-of-consciousness rant worthy of Hunter Thompson. Judge for yourself:

Going ‘Stepford’

“There's a renaissance of liquidity so apparent it's frightening,” he writes. “Look at the Hang Seng, Nikkei, Dax, Dow, commodities, platinum, low mortgage rates despite all the 'tightening' -- everywhere I turn, like we've all gone Stepford. Oil, the rand, Mexico -- it's all around now. What happened to the debt implosion? The grinding rub of reality? Never mind the BIG adjustment (current account or otherwise) -- not even an honorable mention. The SEC and [debt bear] Doug Noland have quieted down, IPOs and acquisitions are back in the news, Google is doing a Juniper Networks (do I hear 900 and a 3-for-1 split?) while the Krispy Kreme and Taser pump-and-dumps are fraught with nil, [CNBC lunatic James J. Cramer] Kramer is [retail shill Mary] Meeker in spades... or would that be on speed (LSD?). Even the gold bugs banter oblivion as they drink in their moments in the sun: Is this for real or are we at the apex?

“Second Coming sounds like trumpeting great news to me but it seems we've conquered hurricanes, H5N1, tsunamis, earthquakes, Arnold's proposed hundreds of billions in bond issuance for who knows what in his slingshot state... of bankrupt insanity, the state long touted to be 15 years ahead of the rest of the country, like that was a good thing, progressive nirvana, but today really only a big hyper inflated housing domino spilling denizens north and east to inflate even more denizens out of their own small town nirvanas, meanwhile the financial forums leap frog towards that same nirvana but is this the hyperinflationary blow-off that precedes the deflationary backlash.

E-Z Al as Guardian Angel

“Or business as usual in the evolution of the pond? Is E-Z Al doing what he has been doing all along, protecting the bond market, that mega depository of the ruling backbone of moral majority (moral defined by established wealth sans any philanthropy much less transcendent progressive spiritual venue towards enlightenment), soon to toast praise to their baby boomer brethren, the ones that toiled all those years to serve all of that blessed, endowed few... only the baby boomers can't retire because there's simply too many, who will cater to all of them, do the work and make all the stuff and caddy the clubs? The Chinese are making it and the Mexicans are carrying it so perhaps the grand design of the Maestro is taking hold...?

“The blow off is in no small part a foreshadowing tribute to the baby boomers so they can maintain some vestige of their promised pensions, none of them ever lived off the interest of bonds after all... ignorance is bliss..., but the boomers were never the ruling class nor meant for that line of work, although they did work hard for that American Dream, refined ever so subtly into a carrot of a lesser hue, the dual bread earner mandate. And when they dream their next dream, that they will retire, in 2008, then the price for everything they will require as a class will shoot up, the next inflation, the one that is now being prepared for them, because one worker can not accommodate two retirees, so the boomers are doomed anyway as the cost of that one worker will exact the premium of supply and demand, the prices paid for the comfort of those golden years will be juxtaposed with all the other boomers and all the other retirement monies saved for all those lifetimes, and none will go very far at all and it has started already. Their inculcation. Culminating with third world healthcare greeted with protests from those too old and feeble to matter.

“Maybe that is what is playing out right now in 2006. The transition into the boomers' awakening to the demographic reality that the pot at the end of the rainbow was only for those of birthright, the rule makers and breakers who the boomers... in corporate subservience... gave half of all of their waking hours, five days out of every week, all of the best years of their lives. Huh.”