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[knotagain]

On the January effect, a snippet from today's Barron's:

So, how will the S&P 500 fare in 2001? That's impossible to say. But with a new Congress coming in, along with a new President, the probability is high that the key index's performance next month will tell the tale for the remainder of the year.

Based on the Barometer's track record, a January stumble on Wall Street would be particularly ominous. If the S&P, which, by the middle of last week, was down almost 14% this year, is off next month and then has a decline equal to the 9.9% average downturn seen in the February-December stretches of the seven years mentioned above, the index would slide below 1221.97. That would mark a 20% decline from the high of 1527.46 reached last March. Then, undoubtedly, we'd be in a full-blown bear market.