Stock market investors celebrated the first week of January by bidding up most stock market indexes with a frenzy.  Many stock market pundits reassured jittery investors that  had sustained big losses from their stocks in the last two years, that it looked like the "Bull" was back on Wall Street.

This rally however, was short-lived as most stock market indexes lost all their gains and sank into negative territory by mid January. Casting a pall on the stock market was the "Enron Debacle", and its accompanied creative, and or fraudulent accounting methodology.

A new term was created by Wall Street called "Enronitis"; defined as the heightened scrutiny of all the accounting reports disseminated by public corporations. Investors started to question even the best of the Blue Chip companies accounting reports. 

It stopped becoming fashion

able to be creative in your accounting reports. Many companies embraced creative accounting throughout the nineties in an attempt to satiate the appetites of investors for ever increasing earnings and profits.

Revenues were enhanced and expenses were diminished by quasi legal accounting gimmicks used by many corporations. Throughout January, investors begin to punish any company's stock that had any smell of accounting gimmickry.

January ended with most major stock market indexes off their recent lows, albeit, in negative territory for 2002.

The economic reports being disseminated to the public throughout January cast an unclear picture of whether the economic malaise in the U.S. and global economies was bottoming out.

The War in Afghanistan got more complicated as fighting

was re-ignited by opposing "War Lords" trying to carve up the landscape, with no defined end to the violence and turmoil and  no answer as to what may lie ahead.

Throughout January the fighting in the middle east continued to escalate, each side escalating their retaliations.  Investors however, remained jaded as to the escalating violence and its potential for it destabilizing the oil supply.  As such, the middle east played no significant role in directing the stock market in January.

February started with most major stock market indexes losing ground. However, in mid February most major stock market indexes started to diverge, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ-30)  regained its upward momentum, and the NASDAQ Composite Index (NASDAQ) went into a free fall, ending February with one of the worst monthly performances in its history.

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