Oracle stock got hammered last Wednesday, when it traded as low as $60. It had been bouncing around from the high to low $80's, as high as $92, back to the high $70's. (Nothing has changed as far as the company is concerned during that period of time.) After dropping 11% on Tuesday, it went straight down on Wednesday morning, but quickly recovered. Trades were going through at breakneck speed, with most only for 100 to 400 shares. 100-million shares of ORCL traded that day. A quick check of Cisco and Dell showed similar rapid trades, within smaller price ranges. Strike up the theme from "Jaws": just when we thought all the day-trading sharks had left the water, it looks like they're back. The dot.com bust taught them that they can't all get out the door at the same time; there's no liquidity in those kinds of stocks. So now it looks like they're trying to play the game with the most liquid stocks of all. Could there have been a "pump-and-dump" going on in a chat room or two?

ORCL isn't the only big tech that's been socked. To paraphrase the old joke, a correction is when YOUR stocks go down; a bear market is when MY stocks go down. Ain't no denying that the bear is alive and well, having chewed up the most mighty of the big techs. It wasn't surprising when the dot.coms went to hell. MPR's computer news feature, "Future Tense", now plays taps as it chronicles the demise each day of still more dot.coms. And it wasn't so surprising when the next tier of super-heated stocks, the big-but-not-proven Amazons and Yahoos, took a dive. But now the big, beautiful Shaquille O'Neals of the tech world have gotten creamed. Among those down over 50% from their highs are Lucent, Dell, WorldCom, Microsoft, and Motorola. SAP, Nokia, Intel, and Ericsson are off 30+%. The big beauties go up too much, they go down too much.

Looking for a picture to put up on your dartboard? I nominate Alan Greenspan.