Income stocks seem quite strong of late. Have the pension funds stopped selling (to buy bonds) for the year so they can concentrate on tidying up the paperwork and party this week? Mine are up today and have been strongish for a week or two. Good job since most of my smallcap holdings have suffered for no reason that I know of. If I remember rightly, smallcaps last two years were weak the week or two before Xmas as MMS offloaded stock to minimise holdings over the holidays. Modest buying over the jollies did nothing but there were good mark-ups afterwards when they were caught short.