You want to talk about stupid, this was almost the definition of it.

The market was trading mostly flat until in the middle of the day Dow Jones (DJ) got an "unsolicited bid" from Murdoch.

WAY over the current price. $60, in fact.

Well, Dow Jones is a funny company. While its "public", its only in name. The Bancroft family owns 60-some percent of the stock. With majority ownership of the stock comes majority voting rights. And the Bancrofts appear to have said "nuts". Oops.

Now you'd think that Murdoch would have had at least an unofficial discussion with the Bancrofts' before he did this. Perhaps he did - and was told "nuts" - and decided to do this anyway as a way to say "screw you, I'm gonna shove this in your shareholders' faces!"

I don't know - but what I do know is that a deal like this that blows up leaves egg all over everyone's face that has their finger in or on it.

Anyway, this sort of thing tends to produce really odd whipsaws in the market, and this was no exception. All major indices closed higher, with the Dow up the strongest at about 0.6%, closing at 13,136.

We also had economic news today, as I reported on earlier. The reality of the news, on balance, wasn't good at all. While the ISM numbers were mildly positive they contained a nasty surprise inside - costs were way up on energy and commodities. That's extremely negative, because one of two things has to happen - either prices have to go up (inflation) or profits have to come down (bad for profit reports.) Cost is cost; you either eat it or pass it on - pick - both are bad for the economy.

The Existing Home Contracts report was absolutely awful. Lowest level since March of 2003. There was no good news to be found in there - at all. Down 10% year-over-year, and finally, someone outside of the blogging community is starting to "get it" - this is not a "slight weakness". When The Fool picks up on it, you know you're late to the party. I like The Fool, but guys - geez, do you think you could have bothered to do a bit of research before writing your earlier puff pieces on this topic, and your pumps on lenders? Give me a break.

A quick "closing note". First, the Canary..... he actually cheeped audibly this afternoon - unfortunately he had one of his wings smashed shortly thereafter, so now he's got an injury to go along with the gas poisoning. And it appears that something with big teeth might be about to eat him. Seriously. He decided to crawl under the oxygen mask, hiding himself as best he could inside it. I poked him to make sure he was still alive - he is.

For now.

More later.....