I Don’t Care Mode

Will the market go back into “I Don’t Care Mode”?

This is the question investors must ask themselves if they’re playing this week. Other than constructive housing data that continues to dribble in, all of the other news is complete and total ass. But will it matter?

Take the Moody’s downgrade of France last night. That’s quite a thing, non?

Or the massive admission of accounting fraud at HPQ that’s dragging the Dow component down to price levels not seen since the Wright Brothers were inventing flight as a means of peeping in through ladies’ windows.

There’s more – we could talk about the historic lows in iconic, formerly-important American retailer stocks like Best Buy and JC Penney’s – both cratering just ahead of the holiday season.  But you know all about that.

We could also talk about that big jump in weekly jobless claims from last week, but we’ve already dismissed that as Sandy-related.

We could also mention the fact that yesterday’s rally began under false pretenses on Friday and then fed on itself as shorts were caught leaning too hard.  Those false pretenses being the innocuous-on-the-surface statements from our political leaders. By not announcing some sort of Thunderdome-esque rape-and-kill match, markets took the blandness in their meaningless words as a positive. This despite the fact that no deal is expected to be announced until just before Christmas!

But we won’t harp on these issues. Instead, we’ll look to see if the holiday week means another round of “I Don’t Care” in the markets, another spate of “well, the Fed is underneath so whatever.”

This morning’s open would indicate that this is exactly the environment we’re in once again. I suppose I’ll do very little and try to enjoy it for the moment.