Anyone following the markets closely on Thursday risked falling into a trance (see chart inset). Buyers and sellers threw sissy-boy punches all day long, effecting price action so listless and dithering that it’s difficult to imagine Friday bringing a discernible change.  In short, it’s just the kind of lull Mr. Market creates in order to set up a Sunday evening surprise — what I referred to the other day as a ‘Pearl Harbor attack.’  Yeah, I know: An important point that Nassim Taleb made in his 2007 best-seller The Black Swan is that, by definition, such events cannot be anticipated or described in advance.  Even so, hope springs eternal that Wall Street’s best and brightest will at some point get the crap kicked out of them, the better to start the cycle anew with chastened markets that might bend more easily toward rationality if not necessarily honesty.