*Playing down the rally

The Dow is up around 100 points as of this writing, so it's looking like 15 out of 16 up days. And yet, the papers don't seem very interested - certainly not the way they were after the big selloff on Feb. 27. Grumpy Editor notes that most all the big dailies - with the exception of USA Today - chose to bury news about the Dow hitting an all-time high this week. It would be nice to believe that the explanation involves more than bidness jackels only wanting to blow up the bad stuff. Perhaps they're unenthused because Wall Street is unenthused. Many analysts clearly hadn't expected the strong earnings that have been reported so far. Ryan Detrick of Schaeffer’s Investment Research, says that a recent slash in profit forecasts might have been "a little too extreme." Of course, there's still a bunch of companies yet to report and perhaps bad news awaits. But not so far. If the market holds up for the next three hours, let's see what kind of coverage a 12,900+ Dow receives.

*Update: Another record high - and a big day overall. The Dow closed at 12,961.98, up more than 153 points for the session, or 1.2 percent.