Hey, how's that hangover doing! You know - the one you created celebrating the news that the bull market is back! Remember hearing Mark Leibovit, Chief Market Strategist for VRTRADER.COM tell NPR's Paul Kangas on the April 18 of Nightly Business Report: "I don't want to start predicting a new bull market, but our model says up here for next several weeks. So I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt."

Here, let me join your celebration and loudly clang this Chinese gong I just bought on sale at Wal-Mart! It will go great with the new acid jazz CD I bought, Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi.

Benefit of the doubt is all that was driving the sounds of the thievery on Wall Street this week. Citigroup loses $5 billion and the market rises over 200 points, leading Robert Folsom of Elliott Wave International to pose the question: If losses are "good," big losses must be "better". Folsom goes on to explain, "The problem with today's news falls in the lap of those who DO believe investors are rational and that earnings drive stock — like most economists and members of the press, for example. Once you realize that investors are frequently irrational, then it's not too hard to see Stupid Season for what it is."

I am one who definitely does not believe that the current crop of market manipulated are rational. On both Thursday and Friday when the Dow-Jones index rose over 200 points, the Google News headlines for bad economic news outnumbered those for the allegedly good economic news, but even European stocks rose on news of Citigroup "earnings". It thus became clear to me that my impressions through the comments of investors and observers on the Google business pages were on the right track.

To be fair to these erstwhile experts, their tone has altered recently as the amount of bad economic news has sunk in. They are more aware of the problems facing our economy, but then they are playing with their own capital. Losing it would mean something.

The major market swings have to be driven by the institutional investors' automated systems which don't base their decisions on common human rationality. Ryan Lentell, an analyst with Morningstar, points out the reasoning behind the institutional investors' pushing the index skyward: "Any results short of "horrific" - which would have to include the need to raise new capital - were going to lead to gains because of pricing." No major bank had announced by Friday any such need, which - if Lentell is correct - was thus interpreted as good news at a time when that particular commodity is in dire supply. NPR's Nightly Business Report explained that "traders were relieved because the write-downs were much lower than expected..."