Ouch, Babe

Miss Market's bite is not playful.

I feel like the flabbergasted bulldog in Coolidge's poker-playing dogs painting, "Poker Sympathy." The poor son-of-a gun's four aces are spilling off the felt table and he is falling off his chair as some terrier with his front paws placed squarely behind his straight flush roars with derision as the collies, spaniels and labs seated around the men's club den yelp with tongues hanging out.

Citigroup is now a penny stock. Texas Tech soundly beat Kansas, which I thought was the peaking power in the Big 12, for crying out loud.

Is capitulation kaput? A bull since the November low, I bailed on several names last week, thinking this would be a sure sign that the market had bottomed and was poised to rise. But, as my college buddies will remember from a game we used to play when our senses were reeling from excess and much laughter, I have pulled a double-reverse dupe on myself and the rest of the American investing public, for which I apologize.

So I'm buying tomorrow in the hope that it resolves this mess once and for all. But in this bizarro world, look for payroll numbers to be better than expected and further stock market declines -- or maybe the opposite. In other words, I admit I don't have a clue, so I'm confining my bets to college basketball, about which I have nary a clue, as well, it turns out.

Sticking with PALM and AMD, taking the Musketeers of Xavier (love the nickname) at home against Dayton and giving the points.