NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Battle back! After some slippin' and slidin' early in the day, stocks came back in the afternoon. It's simple really: What goes down for five days in a row, must come back up. (That's a joke...)

Or look at it this way. Market goes down five days and then up one: If this trend continues, we're going to have a pretty lousy year! Techs were the winners today. The Naz is actually far and away the best-performing index year to date. (Will that last? Ha!)

On Thursday, the Dow climbed 50 points to 8,369, while the Nasdaq was up 28 to 1388 (over 2 percent!). Hey watch me, Ferdinand the Bull (Don't get near me if I sit on a thistle!), I mean Andy Serwer, on CNN's "American Morning with Paula Zahn," and Headline News. Read Loose Change for Super Bowl predictions. Here's wazzup:

STOCKYARD Telecoms weak across the board (see below)...McDonald's posts its first loss; yeah we saw that. MCD lost 36 cents to $15...

Wall Street bonuses likely to be down 37 percent. Good! There goes the NYC real-estate market!...

As for the techs: TI, H-P, Intel, and MSFT were up strongly, mostly on good news coming from the Texas Instruments folks. (Shhhh: I am sure Tampa Bay will win!)

CALLING ALL STOCK SPLITS Shoot! I'd like to see a study about reverse stock splits. Yes, you guessed it, my theory is they NEVER work. EVER! AT&T did a 1/5 reverse back in November when the stock was around $13, paid out some cash. Company announced today that sales would continue to decline, albeit less than last year when they fell some 10 percent. (Gee thanks!)

So guess what? T tanked today. Falling almost 20 percent to $20.49. So much for the power of the reverse split, just another cockamamie strategy cooked up by investment bankers looking for a payday. Tell you what, you tell me ANY company that has pulled off a reverse split, and I'll write it up! (Of course there must be some...?)

SUN RESPONDS TO MY ARTICLE ON LINUX "I'm calling a foul on your story 'Penguins Take On Titans.'...You've missed the boat with your piece when it comes to Sun. Sun is embracing Linux, not trying to stop it. Linux is as much an opportunity for Sun as anyone else when it comes to new opportunities. The comment about users not seeing demonstrable advantage over the plain-vanilla servers running Linux is simply hogwash. Sun proves this wrong every time we make a sale, and by the way, the low end of our systems business is larger than the entire Linux systems business." -- Russ Castronovo, public relations, Sun Microsystems

THIS IS WAR! I'm getting used to the freezing cold, the soggy stock-market action, and the fact that Mr. Al Qaeda will come back for a visit some day. Hello to all that! They can't beat me! I am hunkering down in the cold, fighting the fight, the tough economy, stocks going nowhere, even knowing that out there somewhere are bad guys who obsess about killing us, even though all we want to do is live, baby, live. Just leave us alone, please. We'll leave you alone, too; we have enough problems with jobs, 401(k)s and credit-card debt. I won't impose on you. You don't impose on me! (But I digress...)

One real problem in business and in life is if you start believing your own press clips. Question: Is there a certain investment banking firm in Baltimore not named T. Rowe Price that falls in that category?...

Deep Blue asks re: Linux: "I'm curious where this will be in 3 to 4 years. You know MS is going to have a damn good response. I'm thinking some type of MS Windows-freeware that is good but not great that the developer nation can build on. You'd be a fool to count them out.

Super Bowl -- did you know that it is a registered trademark now -- so advertisers can't come out and say, 'Get this new big-screen TV for the Super Bowl,' they have to say 'big game.' Soon you won't be able to say Street Life anymore, you'll have to say that 'Serwer column'...Want your own ATM? Start the Time Warner employees credit union. I think CUs are pretty easy to set up -- heck you could even be a bank prez...Did they include these in the housing starts?" Thanks, Blue!...

View from the left coast: "Raiders will tromp on the Bucs. Gannon has too many weapons in his arsenal. Tampa Bay won't get to him. Rice, Brown, Garner and Woodson are too hungry and have too much to prove to lose. This year defense finally loses. Raiders 31 - 24. -- BC"....

Andrew Serwer is editor-at-large of Fortune magazine.

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