Whenever big news like yesterday's crossing of the 14,000 mark of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and today's subsequent 100 point decline hits, journalists and pundits always try to prove that they aren't surprised by what's going on.

In fact, Eric Teal, chief investment officer of First Citizens BancShares Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina, told Bloomberg News: "A market pullback would not be surprising at all to us.'' Teal isn't alone. Spencer Clarke's Chief Market Strategist Michael Sheldon told Reuters that he also wasn't surprised, arguing, "It's certainly to be expected to have some profit taking given some of the earnings reports we had this morning and given the fact Dow closed at an all-time high on yesterday."

No one on Wall Street is ever surprised by anything, except for individual investors who buy and sell stocks. They are surprised all of the time.

To be fair, Teal and Sheldon are trying to feed the media's insatiable lust for pithy quotes on topics ilke the stock market, where there often are no clear cut reasons for why something happened.

Pundits, many of whom relish the spotlight, want to be helpful to the press but at the same time don't want to say anything that might get them in trouble with their bosses. Reporters, too, are under presure to make sense of the sometimes perplexing moves of the market.

The end result is that no one winds up saying much of anything.