Looks like IBM's earnings were a clean beat - top line, bottom line, and orders.
It's incredible that the market has no memory from day to day.
If home prices continue their decline, it will be time to consider the adverse consequences of the bankruptcy of the private mortgage insurance industry on the already fragile residential real estate market.
Another (non-traditional) headwind.
I'm hearing that the iPhone 3GS will be sold with the iPhone 5 as a prepaid phone.
Macroeconomic worries
* Goldman Sachs reduced its second-half 2011 GDP growth expectations
* The validity of the European stress test has been questioned.
* Some German officials are balking at the Greek bailout plan.
* More political partisanship has been on display and little progress has been made on the U.S. budget ceiling discussions.
* A weekend Wall Street Journal report states that the European stress test did not include loans to businesses and consumers in southern Europe.
Bill Fleckenstein succinctly describes "the overriding game theory at present relating to the Washington, D.C., circus":
* Debt ceiling debate matters and is resolved one way or another: It gets raised, stocks knee-jerk rally, bonds tank as the slosh ebbs and flows. Or maybe the reverse happens.
* Debt ceiling does not get raised on time, stocks tank, bonds rally, dollar goes nuts in some fashion, or maybe everything tanks.
* While all the debt ceiling hype churns around, jerking players back and forth, Europe implodes and various parts of the "circus" go nuts in assorted directions.
