I watched the stock market yesterday rather passively. I pretty much gave up on an Obama welcome rally Friday when the market deteriorated into the close. That isn’t to say we won’t see one, but the step down we’ve taken has made such a rally almost irrelevant. There hasn’t been a lot of meaningful news impacting the market. Alcoa is unhappy. I recently had the following conversation with someone:

“Aloca is going to take a hit.”

“Who’s Alcoa?”

“You know how the Dow is composed of the 30 companies that ‘most represent’ the US economy? They’re one of them. They process aluminum.”

“They’re big?”

“They’re big.”

I was quite surprised that this particular individual didn’t know who Alcoa was. It’s always a bit jarring when someone resets your perspective on economic news like that. To tell the truth, I enjoy having moments like that. It’s like coming up for air.

In other news, Banks are merging. There have been some more estimate cuts and downgrades. But here’s the rub: the news seems to be irrelevant to the market movements. Today, we even had “good” news. The US trade deficit is down. If I had to justify the market behavior right now, I’d say it is taking a “wait and see” approach to investing.