In days of yore, in a long lost time when participants still contemplated the relationship of market valuation levels to historical norms and in a forgotten era when brokerage house "buy" ratings were based on an analysis of the underlying fundamentals rather than on an analysis of the investment banking dollars to be gained, market participants knew that there were no guarantees, no easy ticket to the promised land of the good life. They played the game with a knowledge that can only be gained by experience, knowing that parabolic climbs were most often followed by blood curdling declines, knowing that nothing lasts forever, understanding that there are times when gravity will win out and will prevent the ball from bouncing back to the lofty levels it once so easily attained.

Today, in the golden era of bits and bytes, of digital dreams , of overnight paper billionaires, the lessons of the past are often overlooked, the laws of gravity held in contempt, the participants lulled into complacency by their ride on a rising tide, the boastful confusing trading skill with the fortuitous luck of entering the game on a sunny day. Today, when the going gets tough and gravity exerts its pull on the bouncing ball, the tough and not so tough get going…to their nearest phone or computer terminal to bark out buy orders to their broker, confident in their belief that Annie was right, "The sun will (always) come out tomorrow".

The unwavering faith of current day participants that "what goes up, will always go up", when combined with the age-old tendency of the inexperienced to disregard the commonplace warning "past performance is no guarantee of future performance" has magnified the divergence between the performance of the narrow strata of brokerage "analyst" pushed crowd pleasers and the underperforming broader market. In recent weeks, when the going has gotten tough and the buy on the dip faithful have dutifully and mechanically arrived to save the day, their buying has been concentrated not in the market’s true bargains but rather in the market’s most overvalued sectors, namely technology, Internet, and biotech-- pushing these sectors further into the uncharted waters of record valuation levels.

Neither the gravitation towards the most highly "touted" stocks nor the leaving of historical valuation methods by the wayside are surprising, for they are events which routinely occur when widespread knowledge of the longevity and strength of a trend inspire mass public participation, creating a mass frenzy of buying which culminates in a blow-off top similar to that seen in technology stocks during December.

After an initial parabolic upward thrust, blow-off tops will often culminate in a period of widely volatile distribution as money passes from weak hands to strong hands, from the experienced to the inexperienced late-arrivers who have been lured to the "game" by the scent of easy money.

The market’s current phase of distribution is likely to continue until Tax Day, April 15^th, as strong inflows continue to provide a cushion that counters the waves of selling by experienced hands.

The numerous cracks that have begun to appear in the market: from the breakdown of 2/3 of the Dow Industrials (the past two days cyclical dead cat bounce notwithstanding) to the freefall of the Transports, from the breakdown of Internet leaders AOL and Yahoo to the signs of a top in many tech leaders, suggests that the road after April 15^th will take a turn for the worse—that perhaps the chorus line singing "The sun will (always) come out tomorrow" would be well advised to bring an umbrella.