The overall market as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained approximately 355 points or approximately 4.5% since the previous edition of the Sterling Weekly to finish at 8,131.33 The Dow Jones Industrial Average appears to finally have broken from the downward trading channel that I first identified in the December 8th edition of the Sterling Weekly. The real question is where is the Dow going to go from here??

Well, you can formulate your own opinion, but my thoughts are that the overall market is looking to consolidate around the 8,000 level. However since we are heavily into earnings season as the calendar below indicates, please keep in mind that an earnings surprise from anyone of a group of key companies could cause the market to move sharply in one direction or another.

Also, a wild card for the future direction of the market is Friday's decision by the Obama administration's declaration that Carbon Dioxide threatens the planet. According to this weekend's Wall Street Journal, the EPA is planning on regulating CO2 emissions. This will surely open the way for every environment group, and every other person who doesn't like what someone else is doing to enter the court system and try get what they want without waiting for the government to actually make a determination if something is permissible or not; or they may simply use the court system to try to create their own policy. In response to the planned regulations, Consol Energy, Inc. announced that it was delaying 2 mining projects in Appalachia. Guess we can count those as the 1st jobs lost as a result of this new policy. Wonder how the voters in Appalachia voted last November................??? Anyhow, these new regulations are probably going to have the net result of depressing the economy even further by closing existing factories and preventing new ones from being opened thus increasing unemployment and in the end, the good produced in those factories will simply be produced in less clean factories over seas resulting in a net increase in pollution and CO2 emissions. That is unless the demand for those goods simply goes away because no one has any money left. By the way, did I mention that American Electric Power estimated that as a result of the EPA's decision to regulate CO2 emission that the it expects the average consumer's power bill to increase 25-50%. I guess you could call that good news if you read the recent Wall Street Journal editorial where power company executives were expecting utility rates to increase 200-300% as a result of "cap and trade" policies. I don't know about the rest of you, but a 25-50% increase in our monthly utility rates is going to cause some problems in my household, and a 200-300% increase in utility rates would be an outright disaster. I have posted a PDF copy of the Wall Street Journal article "US in Historic Shift on CO2" from this weekend's paper for your review. So, I will try to find the editorial I from a couple of months ago that I mentioned, and I'll post it as well if I can find it. I've also archived the WSJ article on "How Carbon Dioxide became a Pollutant," and their article on the "EPA: Overwhelming Cause to Regulate Greenhouse-Gas Emissions."