The polls are closed. The ballots have been cast. And, with 94% of the precincts reporting, we here at Fool Central can officially project Wall Street as today's loser.

The incumbent bull got booted around a bit. The Dow Jones Industrial Average approached the podium all teary-eyed, trying to explain to its backers why it plunged back below 10,000. The spin doctors will try to explain it away as some corrective fluke. The bears will be all giddy as they strap on riot gear and make their way down to the bomb shelter. But can I ask you to try something else? Can I ask you to walk away from the data, wolf down a Frappucino -- because, hey, Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) needs some lovin' too -- and tell yourself that it takes more than a snapshot to make a moving picture.

The 3.7% slide might seem like a lot, especially to folks who would need a year in a money market bank account to make that back, but isn't that the point? That your money is NOT in the bank or under your mattress? That today's losses can be tomorrow's gains? In a New York Stock Exchange minute it can all change.

While the other indices fared better, the Nasdaq losing just 1.2% today while the S&P shed 2.6%, our Rule Breaker took the hardest hit. Down 4.7%. Without a 'Net too since the carnage came mostly from Celera's (NYSE: CRA) 27 point drop, not our Internet stronghold. Celera is our largest holding right now. Who would've thunk that just a few months ago? In a New York Stock Exchange minute, folks. Everything can change.

So the ticker tape parade has been postponed and I have to call off the caravan. It's a shame too because I knew just where I was going to find the wheels. Today, eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) announced that it would be teaming up with AutoTrader.com to offer its fleet of used car listings at www.ebay-autotrader.com. This is no tiny drive-by venture. AutoTrader has five million unique visitors pulling into its virtual driveway every month. 40,000 used car dealers. 250,000 private sellers. 1.5 million second-hand automobiles.

Those are impressive sums until one considers that eBay generates as many unique visitors in a single week as AutoTrader does in a month. For every car listed on AutoTrader there are three items on the block on eBay where the inventory gets turned over every week. There is also the matter of compulsion. AutoTrader is event driven. Except for that one time every few years when one is carhunting, there is little reason to know what Ford Mustang convertibles are fetching in Twin Falls, Idaho.

eBay has become an addiction. The Nielsen ratings for the last week of February were released a few days back and it's amazing to see how sticky eBay has become. It's flypaper incarnate. The average eBay visit turns into a 55 minute affair. Keep in mind that the average Internet session, the entire online experience, averages just over half an hour. Mindboggling isn't it? eBay is the only top-ranked site where average stays are longer than a complete session. Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) is the next closest, but it clocks in at just half of eBay's raw animal magnetism.

It's surprising to see how shares of eBay were held in check these last few months. I mean, sure, it didn't run up with the traditional e-tailers over the holiday season late last year. Folks want new things or, in the cases where new items are sold on eBay, folks just don't have the time to enter a bidding war for holiday gifts. Fine. But now in the afterglow, how can one not admire the one company that excels at luring customers in and then shackling their eyeballs?

Online users will head over to a portal's search engine, or launch off their service provider's homepage, only to go elsewhere. These are just pit stops along the way. eBay is both the journey and the destination.

For every passing fancy that I have had, from animated art to musical gear to domain name collecting, I have always found myself parked on eBay with my cleats digging deeper and deeper into the soil.

So now that dirt comes with treadmarks courtesy of AutoTrader. Like eBay, the second-hand car specialist serves merely as the intermediary. The buyer and seller agree on a selling price and work out the details themselves. I wonder how much UPS charges for boxing a 1996 Miata? Or maybe it's best to hold on to that motor, like a long-term investing approach, and keep the engine running? Four more years?