You have nobody willing to be a hero here -- it's hard for people to step up to the plate. Trade over the past two sessions has been very speculative. If you removed Iraq, you'd probably have a market that was doing OK.

You have a bit of inertia. You have a certain mentality that we have a deer in the headlights with the near-term earnings uncertainty versus the long-term prospects for economic recovery. So you have a market that's in a tug-of-war.

Monday morning you have the whole election thing going on with the (results) of the recount issue but the election is just a near-term phenomena. Everybody is worried about the economy with respect to where we stand. The notion here is that we have a slower earnings environment and a slowing economy.

Some weaker-than-expected economic data is supporting the plight of equities (Thursday), ... With six rate hikes from the Fed now under our belt, we are beginning to see signs of an economic slowdown, suggesting that there could be light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

The Fed cut 100 basis points (one percentage point) in January and we've got another 50 under our belt now. Monetary policy is a slow moving beast and ultimately it's going to take some time to turn this economy around.

On the other side, in the box makers, we like Gateway. We think that we're through with the seasonally slow period. The fourth quarter is going to be the key for this stock and it has good positioning here.