The bulls continued to dominate the stock market in the first month of 2004.

Even though many stocks had risen from the ashes beginning in October of 2002 almost unabated until January of 2004, most major stock market indexes were still down significantly off their highs that they set in early 2000.

Stock market investors celebrated early in January hoping that the employment report to be released on Friday January 9th, would validate that   the U.S. economy was in fact starting to churn out jobs after more than two years of grueling layoffs.

Most economic pundits predicted that non-farm payrolls for December would rise by more than 150,000, creating more jobs in December than all of 2003 combined.

The "whisper" number for job creation in December was that 200,000 jobs  were to be created. Economists in the private

and public sectors throughout 2003 were prognosticating that each month job growth would begin.

They emphasized that it was essential that the U.S. economy would eventually start to create jobs as the economic recovery in 2003 was not sustainable without these jobs.

At the time that the employment report was released on the morning of Friday, January 9th, most major stock market indexes were solidly in positive territory for the day.

When the job report disclosed that a scant 1,000 jobs were created in December of 2003, most major stock market indexes went into a free-fall.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ-30) that was up almost 100 points when the employment report was released, dropped almost 300 points.

The bulls and the bears kept slugging it out throughout January. The bulls however,

were the winners when January came to an end, albeit most major stock market indexes were up very little for the month.

The bond market was uneventful throughout January, as most bond prices for most maturities remained range bound.

Bond investors sorted out whether the U.S. economy was about to grow robustly ahead (bad for bonds), or to relapse back into economic anemia (good for bonds).

January was one of the worst  months in Iraq, as bombs and fatalities were a daily event.

The violence was supposed to subside in January according to our political leaders as Saddam Hussein had been captured in December.

The daily bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan however, had little if any  impact on  the   stock market  in  the U.S.   and abroad