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Is everybody ready for the weekend? I hope so, but the business-week isn't quite over yet, and we've got one more item to take care of today. It's a big one too - employment (or lack thereof). What appeared to be good news this morning prodded a rally from the market this afternoon, but as all of us know, there's always more to the story.

We're going to give you the COMPLETE employment picture today, warts and all. Though things aren't as good as the unemployment rate of 7.7% would suggest, we actually see this as a good thing.

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Oh man the Dell (DELL) privatization saga will just - not - end... but if you like drama, then the Dell story over the past two months has been a great one.

On the off chance you haven't heard, hedge fund manager and activist investor (and major Dell shareholder) Carl Icahn has pretty much told Dell's Board of Directors to pay a $9.00 per share dividend, or risk being replaced by new board members.

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As we suspected on Wednesday, there aren't as many willing buyers out there as that day's bounce would have led you to believe. We are surprised, however, that it took until the last 15 minutes of trading on Thursday to find some proof of that weakness.

The nearby hourly chart of the SPYders (SPY) says all that needs to be said. Things were fine - even decidedly bullish - for the bulk of the day. When push came to shove later in the session though, those buyers just didn't want to be left holding stocks come tomorrow morning. The market ended the day in the red. And, that selling late in the session was on a lot more volume than any of the buying earlier in the session was.

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Welcome back to day two of what's shaping up to be a respectable recovery effort for the market. That's not to say stocks are out of the woods yet, but a big chunk of the lingering doubts from yesterday were wiped away today. On the other hand...

Politics to Put Stocks in a Headlock?

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As promised to you guys yesterday, we're going to update the market's (the S&P 500's) overall fourth quarter earnings results today. There's no doubt as to what's the biggest thing on your mind right now, however - what's next for this wild market. We'll start there.

Yes, stocks closed higher today, by about 0.6%. That's a solid move, but it still doesn't erase the majority of yesterday's 1.8% drubbing. The S&P 500 managed to move back above that key support line at 1495, but just barely. The index closed at 1496.64, and I suspect the bulk of that gain wasn't rooted in some sort of deep-seeded bullishness on stocks, but more because the market just got pounded yesterday - the proverbial dead-cat bounce.