Grizzly, Yogi or no bear at all? We’re still waiting to see

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Conspiracy theorists can run wild with this one: Just after the Dow Jones industrial average this morning crossed the classic bear-market threshold of a 20% decline from its record high, it rallied.

It wasn’t much of a rally, but it was enough to keep the Dow above the 20%-down mark. The blue-chip index finished the day at 11,346.51, off 106.91 points, or 0.9%. That left it down 19.9% from its record closing high of 14,164.53 reached Oct. 9.

At its intraday low of 11,298 today, the Dow was off 20.2% from its peak.

The mind reels: Does some Wall Street cabal of big market players want to make sure the Dow doesn’t fall into official bear territory and panic the masses?

Wait -- wouldn’t the cabal want to panic the masses, so it could pick up stocks cheap?

Or maybe the cabal wants to keep the market from collapsing just long enough to unload its shares?

Is the Trilateral Commission somehow involved?

Just having a little sick fun here; you have to laugh to keep from crying in this market. To that end, check out this very entertaining picture-post.

As for the market backdrop today: Oil finished at another record high ($140.21 a barrel) and financial stocks again were hammered. That bad combo set the tone for another losing session, although the selling abated sharply compared with Thursday’s rout.

And as has been the case all month, blue-chip stocks were hit hardest today. Smaller stocks continued to fare much better than big stocks. And most market indexes, other than the Dow, still are above their March lows.

The question is whether the general (the Dow) is leading the rest of the troops into a certain massacre.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 4.77 points, or 0.4%, to 1,278.38 today. It’s off 18.3% from its peak reached in October. The New York Stock Exchange composite, down 0.2% today, is off 16.4% from its record high, also set in October.

The Russell 2,000 small-stock index was off fractionally today to 698.14, and is down 18.4% from its record high reached last July.

Note, though, that the Russell was in bear-market territory in March. At its low that month, it was off almost 25% from its peak.

The Russell index’s relative resilience since March may be stoking hopes that if this is a bear market, it’s a kind of mild-tempered, Yogi-style bear -- not the grizzly that ate half the market value of the S&P 500 in 2000-02.

That last bear market, led by technology stocks, was fueled by a collapse of corporate earnings. Just what’s happening to the corporate bottom line this time around will be the market’s main focus in July, as second-quarter profit reports roll out.

How much more fun can investors stand?