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After a great Christmas (minus one brother unfortunately) and a chill New Year's I'm back on the job today. It wasn't easy to rally this morning after being delayed on my flight forever and then coming home around 2:30 am. So this is gonna be short but the S&P is massively up today, after a horrific manufacturing report.

The NYT has this:

"From Australia, to Asia and Europe and the United States on Wednesday, the message in the latest economic reports was clear: manufacturing continued to slump amid the worst slowdown since the Great Depression. In the United States on Friday, a crucial measure of manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level in 28 years in December. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said its manufacturing index was 32.4 in December down from 36.2 in November."

(As an aside, I cant tell you how sick I am of hearing "the worst slowdown since the Great Depression." The Great Depression was something of completely different proportions. Unemployment in the US is at 6.7%. 6.7, okay??!!! In Germany it is at 7.5 -- the lowest level since 1992. In France it's at 7.3. In the Eurozone it's 7.7%. Okay fine, in Japan it's at 3.9%. At the height of the Great Depression unemployment was 25%!! This, right now, has zero to do with the Great Depression.)

Anyways, especially the ISM number is horrific. I've talked about it before but this is a truly abysmal number. All the more surprising that the S&P took off, right after that number was released at 10am. Veddy strange.... Cuz it sure as hell wasn't expected (and then came in better than expected even if still bad -- that was definitely NOT the case.)



Finally, Bloomberg has this headline as the day closes:

"S&P 500 RALLIES 3.1% FOR BEST START TO A YEAR SINCE 2003"

But one swallow does not make a summer or however the saying goes. But, I've been buying slow and steady and will continue to do so.

Happy New Year everyone.