Bonds: Up. Stocks: Down, Up, Down . . .

CALL IT MANIC-DEPRESSIVE. OR A MANIFESTATION of split personality. Or maybe both. There is no one term, psychiatric or financial, to describe Wall Street's reaction to President Clinton's deficit-cutting plan.

Stock prices swung . . . er . . . crazily. Down 83 points on Tuesday, as measured by the Dow Jones industrial average, after Clinton's Monday night TV preview. Marking time Wednesday. Thursday, sequential chaos: up 35 points early, then down around 40, then recovering to a loss of only around 10. Friday, up, down, sideways and up at the end, for a gain of almost 20 points on the day -- but a loss of roughly 70, or 2%, for the week. Fundamentally, stock traders were highly nervous. They were worried that the higher taxes Clinton proposed would, at least in the short run, weaken the economic recovery and corporate profits.

Bond traders did no such nail biting. They bid up prices all week, in a mood of sunny optimism that Clinton's program really will reduce deficits. In the bond market's calculus, a lower deficit equals less government borrowing equals higher bond prices equals lower interest rates (which move in the opposite direction). For the moment, that became a self-fulfilling prophecy: the yield on 30-year Treasury bonds fell to barely more than 7%, the lowest since such bonds were first issued in 1977. By Friday those prospects had begun to cheer stock traders too. Monday -- who knows?

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CAPTION: DOW JONES AVERAGE

30-YEAR TREASURY BONDS