joining us now, rick bensignor, chief market strategist at dalman rose, the new york investment firm. you had, rick, nice to you have on the program. >> thanks for having me. >> susie: all right, so this is a very interesting trend. tell us why it's happening and how can investors take advantage of it? >> well there are two things to look at. one is just looking over the last 14 months, the fact that you said that the market is up 19%. but if you take away the first day of 9 month t is only up 2.3% so something is driving the market at the beginning of the month it is most likely some indication that the retail investor has come back into the market over the last year or so. if you think about the money that comes in at the end of the month in the paycheck and how people allocate money to a 401(k) plan t is a natural thing to see money coming in at the beginning of the month. in fact historically, and i've been in this business 30 years, and i remember hearing this when i was a young puppy in this industry, that if you take the last trading day of the month and the first four trading

rick bensignor attributed that trend to people investing their paychecks at the beginning of the month, but that certainly wasn't the case yesterday. so, what happened? bensignor says the market zigged when so many were looking for it to zag. in essence, he blames yesterday's 168-point drop on the spike in oil prices. next month, the first trading day is friday, april 1, so, susie, we'll see if the markets get tricked on april fool's day. >> susan: only if you're superstitious. >> tom: that's "nightly business report" for wednesday, march 2. i'm tom hudson. good night, everyone. and goodnight to you, too, susie. >> susie: good night, tom. i'm susie gharib. good night, everyone. we hope to see all of you again tomorrow night. "nightly business report" is made possible by: this program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by wpbt captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> more information about investing is available in "nightly business report's" video "how wall street works". to order this dvd, cal