So much for that early strength, but nothing matters until 3 PM. Things have gotten so dysfunctional in individual stocks that I have not looked at any of my watch lists since over a week ago. I have a series of about 12 watch lists, sorted by sector, with a few lists as "misc" (various sectors) and I sort it by best performance on the day to worst. In the old days I used to go look up the extremes (best and worst) for the day to see if there was news, what the charts looked like, are they breaking out, breaking down - is there a compelling buy? a place to begin to layer out?

Now? None of that. The only thing anyone looks at are indexes and ETFs. I'm the same. Why bother when 2 PE stocks can lose 50% and go to 1 PE stocks. Valuations have meant nothing; no sector leads for more than 2 days, today its a bogus rally in retail on the "hopes" of $1.50 gasoline and lower mortgage rates. Wow the exact same thesis that was told to us 3 months ago at $2.50 gasoline. That worked out well. But today it's retail that is great to buy whereas Monday this group was the hardest hit. This goes back to one of my 9 points - there is no leadership. You cannot own a stock and ride it for weeks or months anymore, outside of a handful of niche companies that are doing ok.

Anyhow the point is, at this time I miss a lot of individual company news because in the old days when a stock was down a lot there was usually a reason. A news event. Now, it just gets lost in the mess - stocks are down 15% for no reason other than the market is open that day. You can't tell any news flow from stock action - it is so haphazard. I did catch this Research in Motion (RIMM) warning only because its on the front page of every financial media site - but the stock was up earlier on the day (now flat to slightly down); par for the course in the market.

• BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. on Tuesday lowered its forecast for its third-quarter revenue and earnings per share, citing the impact of the strong dollar and the weak U.S. economy.
• The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said it now expects its adjusted earnings per share to be in a range between 81 cents and 83 cents for the quarter that ended Nov. 29. That's down from its initial forecast of between 89 cents and 97 cents per share.
• It said it now expects third-quarter revenue to be in a range between $2.75 billion and $2.78 billion, down from a previous range of $2.95 billion to $3.10 billion.
• RIM said two-thirds of the difference in the revenue forecast was due to lower-than-estimated unit shipments of existing products, which it attributed to the weak U.S. economy and shifts in product launch dates within the quarter.
• It said its gross margin for the quarter would be between 45 and 46 percent, which it described as lower than expected.
• But it cited strong customer response to its new BlackBerry phones launched in the current quarter and noted "strong momentum" in recent weeks.

Long Research in Motion in fund; no personal position