I think that we just ran out of steam after a couple of hours. I am glad that we held on our gains from Friday. Oil will continue to be a driver, earnings will be a driver, and so will economics.

[Hogan also likes Intel for a position in the semiconductor industry.] Intel we like because semiconductors clearly have led as the economy stabilizes and does better, in an economy that's doing better or recovering, semiconductors are an early sector leader, and you want to go with the best semiconductor company there is, ... So Intel is an obvious choice as a recovery play.

Compaq is weighing down the Nasdaq, but we're getting a rotation into Dow stocks, ... It (the election) got so petered out after 35 days that it was hard to get much of a reaction.

I would take oil as a front-burner issue, ... Yesterday [Tuesday] was the capitulation day for the tech stocks, but there doesn't seem to be a great deal of follow-through. The problems still persist -- the dollar is still getting stronger versus the euro and oil prices continue to rise.

I think 50 basis points (one-half percentage point) is a credible consensus estimate for what the Fed does (at its March 20 meeting). Unfortunately, over the last five or six tumultuous trading days, we've talked ourselves into the fact that the Fed cares about equity valuations, but that's not the case.

But if I had to venture a guess I think we'll start trending higher up until the Fed meeting on Tuesday and then really take off. Unfortunately, the volumes remain anemic here so there's not a whole lot of action going on either way.