if a crisis has to occur， I d just as soon it wouldn t occur on a<br >Monday morning， b or that s when I hold my weekly staff meeting<br >and when I m least ready to cope with anything else.<br > But thi.，， crisis did occur on a Monday morning. And it shook<br >the hell out of me.<br > The meeting was in progress It had developed into an cxccp-<br >ti<)nM]v lively one. My staff consists of five people， Since the six<br >of us usually work independently， spending a lot of time on the<br >road， the only chance we have to get together as a group and<br >compare notes is at the beginrling of the week， before we scatter<br >The mfocmation and opinions we exchange then form the basis<br >of the market letter which we send to our customers every Tues.-<br >day and which otlr customers seem to regard as one of the most<br >valuable services our company provides.<br > As always， the meeting began with a discussion of the market s<br >performance during the past week. On this particular Monday<br >that didn t take long， because the market hadn t done much. The<br >Dow-lones industrials had dribbled along， closing on Friday a<br >mere three points above where they d opened on the preceding<br >Monday. Our collective view was that they d continue to dribble<br >a]ong for another couple of weeks， until the President delivered<br >his State of the Union address.<br > Then the interesting stuff began to come out.<br >