Will the Dow Industrials surpass 11350, a threshold that I’ve characterized as crucial to the bullish case for the intermediate term? If Monday’s turgid action is any indication, the Indoos will get there eventually, but probably later rather than sooner, one mincing step at a time. Usually the opening minutes of a new week provide Da Boyz with an excellent opportunity to mount a short squeeze. Yesterday, though, their tried-and-true ruse failed just 15 minutes into the session, presumably frustrating all of those who thrill to pay top dollar for whatever someone else might be selling. Stocks went flat for the remainder of the day, the DJIA having gone no higher than 11308.39.

(Click on chart to enlarge)

Check out the chart above if you want to see how flat. It shows a second-guessing game at its trance-inducing worst, played out against a backdrop of falling oil prices, bird flu on-the-wing, and the revelation from Helicopter Ben that a glut of world savings might be responsible for the unusually low, long-term interest rates. Maybe he’s got a point, since there are so few good reasons to take the supposed glut and invest it in, say, new manufacturing capacity. But who’s complaining? The thrill of living in a post-industrial economy is that -- to borrow from Warhol -- someday we’ll all be billionaires. But not if we have to do it by creating real goods from actual raw materials. That’s so Adam Smith.