Market Scramble

You have to give credit where credit is due. The powerful are managing this market higher and taking few prisoners.

What you saw today were the market elephants massively scrambling to cover what shorts they had and for the under invested to add exposure. With today's decision, all of the major market indexes reclaimed their 50 day/200 day moving averages and are within striking distance of the summer highs.

For the past month, the Fed has done just about everything they can to keep the bulls fat and happy. Amid that backdrop, we have analysts who've been cutting down earnings estimates aggressively so that when companies report next month things will look pretty good. Combine that with pressure to perform in the final quarter of the year and it looks and feels like today was the official start of the 4th quarter rally even though the quarter doesn't officially start for another couple of weeks.

Analysts will start tomorrow morning by pounding the table on market valuations and how cheap stocks are with a very friendly Fed. At the same point, under invested investors (like yours truly) will be hoping for negative headlines to surface so that they can put money to work without chasing performance. Good luck.

For the market to reverse these gains, something new & really bad has to show up on the horizon. Unfortunately for the bears and the sidelined, that has and continues to be a bet that has reaped few rewards. It will someday, but today wasn't it and tomorrow doesn't look too darn good either.