No news is good news?

This concept may be relevent to children's letters home from summer camp but today in the market it's another story. The absence of major news resulted in a typical day in a bearish market environment: Opening rallies led to mid morning highs that faded steadily and resulted in overall losses across the board. The advance decline/volume stats were decidely bearish. Outside of CSCO, the whole thing stank.
Typical day in a bearish market environment? One doesn't need to see the signature to know the work of a favorite artist and one shouldn't need the averages to hit the obligatory down 20% mark to know it's a bear market and investment allocations should be made accordingly. However, above all, in this modern, fast paced world of instantaneous communication, we must stay flexible because it can and will change fast.
Speaking of the modern fast paced world, an old favorite indicator is the Dow Theory. It's based on the comparison of the stocks of companies that make and sell things (Dow Industrials) vs stocks of the companies that ship those things (Dow Transports). They should move in tandem and in most trending markets they do. Notice that the Transports are in a clear and confirmed downtrend while the Industrials started to improve off the lows but are now weakening. Since no one really talks about the Dow Theory anymore because it's so old fashioned, I think it's time to pay attention to it.

Bright spot: Bonds rallied and yields fell as the day wore on (if you're long bonds).