And over the past month:

Today, it was obviously the oils and the utilities that took the biggest hit. The question we have to ask is, (1) was this week's pull-back a price correction of a couple over-bought sectors, putting them now into the middle of the pack for the past month performance, (2) was it something fundamental to the industry, or (3) is this the start of a major bear market, and the big money is pulling out of the oils and utilities first?

Since I wasn't doing the selling today, I don't have the answer.

I have been asked why, if interest rates are going up, which could be a driver of a new bear phase, why were the financials so strong?

That too I don't know, but I do know that in the worst of times, the financials form part of the defensive segment of the market, and that's because typically they have already started their bear phase ahead of the other sectors. In fact the regulated power and water utilities, the financials and consumer staples usually are the defensive sectors, which I have written about previously as part of my discussion of sector rotation.

And that's exactly what happened today: XLP, XLF and IYZ were the sectors that fell the least.

In that same discussion, you will note that the last of three groups to fall will typically be the energy, basic materials and industrial conglomerate sectors. And that too is what happened today: XLE, XLU (led by the deregulated oil & gas pipelines), XLB, and to a lesser extent XLI were the worst.

XLI was down a lot today, but look at GE (the 800-pound gorilla in that fund), back down to August 2004 prices. More than a whole year wasted!

My take on what has happened this week is that this is a textbook rotating bear. There is likely to be a bear movement like a slinky toy falling down the stairs. This undulating motion may soon repeat itself " maybe not tomorrow, but then again maybe " but likely until the broad market has reached what I call an accumulation zone.

That point is likely to be at Dow 9,800 (my first choice), or further down to Dow 9,200 (my second choice). I haven't changed my opinion on that for most of this year, so all my readers must know that today was no surprise to me.

In fact it makes me happy, because it puts me that much closer to publishing my new 100-pct long portfolio for the next bull market, which I'll do from selections taken from the Cara Global Best 100 Companies list, which I will publish that day.

Today, the Dow was down "1.2 pct, the Nasdaq down "1.7 pct and the S&P500 down "1.5 pct. The small cap index was down "2.8 pct. The latter is usually a sign of a bear market, where the little stocks get eaten first.

There are some major events on the horizon: Greenspan and Snow are headed to Beijing this month to try once again to pry some semblance of fair currency trading out of the Chinese. And pretty soon the President must announce the name of his candidate for succession to the Greenspan position as head of the Fed.

Who knows, maybe the Gnomes today discovered the name of that future king, and suffered violent stomach flu? After all, interest rates were down a bit today, which helped the banks somewhat, and I did note the same thing a few weeks ago, right before the Fed rate hike when the banks popped up.

Maybe everybody in inside circles of Wall Street is seeing something hawkish in the next choice of Fed Head, which would be good for bonds, and terrible for oils and basic materials. If that were the case, it ought to be bad for Gold too, but I'm not playing that card yet!

Mr. Joe in Beijing has the trump card there.