This is the kind of thing that happens with economic data. In any given month, you have random variations in price trends Those random changes tend to offset each other.

We did OK for the first half of the month and then faded out -- a lot of the economic data in the last few weeks have been a little discouraging. It's kind of a sour way to end a good quarter but not too bad for the month.

Given recent macro and consumer data have been positive, Travis is a great recovery story on a 12-month view. It remains one of our top picks for 2006.

The yen continues to weaken, as it should, given the continued weak economic data coming from Tokyo.

There is the pessimistic notion that this is not going to go away and that's going to have a more lasting impact on driving habits and behavior, I suspect, than we've seen so far.

It's going to take a lot more than one month to convince me we are in a worrisome trend.