i had them explained after listening to ten years with the late great lou rukheiser. terms -- cyclical and secular. you hear them all the time but no one except me bothers to explain what they mean even though they are crucial when it comes to picking the right stocks. cyclical has nothing to do with the spin cycle or wagner's ring cycle. some good music there. secular isn't about the separation of church and state or public versus parochial schools. we say a company is cyclical if it needs a strong economy in order to have earnings grow. it depends on the business cycle. who is? u.s. steel. they need the economy. newcor. they fall in this category. caterpillar. ingersol rand, dupont, ppg. that's the pittsburgh plate glass. these companies, even though they are well run, all of them are hostages to the economy. when it heats up, oh, man, there's no stopping them. do you know what they do? [ ka-ching ] they earn a ton of money and we'll pay more for the earnings. when it slows down -- [ sell, sell, sell ] -- when we shift into recession mode they earn less and investor