When the chips are down buy a railroad

This chart really does not need much in the way of captions.

The key semiconductor index has very clearly broken down and is underperforming in a down market. That means it is falling more than the S&P 500 and that is not what happens in a bull market. So what does the Oracle do?

Why he plays monopoly and buys himself a railroad! You can make your own comments on why today and not a few months ago when he first started to talk up the economy. I smell Goldman Sachs.

The media made a big deal out of Buffet going "all in" on the economy with this move at this time at this price. Again, why wait until now when he was "all in" months ago? Is it really a bet on the economy? Maybe it was a patriotic move so that a key cog in the infrastructure does not fall into foreign hands thanks to the dollar.

Or was it financial engineering as he buys now and pays later with depreciated currency or assets? That's not a bet on the economy is it?

Who am I to question the wisdom of this move. He is the man, not me. What I question is the nonsense that he is betting on the economy. He is betting on Warren Buffet (I would too) and nothing more.

Crash!

No, not the stock market but my computer. Old Bucket O'Bolts finally keeled over and I had to run backups today. Most of my stuff was already backed up to an external drive so inconvenience, not catastrophe. By the way, it was a Dell I bought in 2001 or 2002, complete with Word 2000. Can't say the same about Mac hardware from Macs down to iPods. Too bad Dells have to come with Evil Empire software. At least I won't have to get Vista.

As for the market, another day, another rejection. Last week, we had a little bit of panic and the next day it zoomed higher. Ditto for Friday and today. While I make my case for a negative market in my column today one thing I can say in favor of the bulls is that the market did not crash today. Given what happened last week, the extent of the rally on lousy fundie outlook and crap-o volume it was rather comforting from a citizen's point of view to see China rebounding higher overnight and premarket futures a bit higher than flatline.

So, the rally is over. That does not mean the next stop is major lows but for now it is time to enjoy the profits you made. My regret is getting whippy dipped (that's atechnical term) out of my long in the GDX gold miners ETF. We bought the open Thursday and had to stop out Friday.