Although I can think of a hundred good reasons why the broad averages should be falling apart, chief among them the catastrophic failure of Obamacare and the effects thereof on a huge swath of the U.S. economy, there is one factor that for the time being will continue to offset them all: promiscuously easy credit.  And that is why we should regard the weakness of the last few days as a sleazy shakedown attempt by DaBoyz. Their goal, of course, is to load up on stocks before goosing them into a parabolic Santa rally next week. (Applying such a cheery, chirpy metaphor to so corrupt, cynical and evil an enterprise as the stock market makes me want to barf.)

Notice in the chart how the week’s engineered sell-offs have grown more and more impacted with each new day. The scrunched up price bars suggest that DaBoyz are not having an easy time trying to frighten widows, pensioners and orphans out of their shares. If this is in fact the case, we should see a mad scramble for stocks in the final hour or two on Friday. If not, we might infer that perhaps the Obamacare dreadnought — along with a reported huge inventory build-up by retailers — is finally starting to weight on investors’ tiny, terminally diseased brains.