Before the Open (Mar 6)

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed up across-the-board. Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore led the way. Europe is currently mostly up. Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic are each up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is up slightly. Oil and copper are down slightly. Gold and silver are down slightly.
The market jumped yesterday. Most of the indexes registered new highs; the Russell small caps and S&P mid caps are lagging. It was the S&P’s 5th up day in the last six days. In hindsight, the late-February pullback, which consisted of three down days in a four day span, doesn’t look much different than the late-Dec pullback – just a little selling pressure coming off a huge start to 2013.
How many times has this happened…the market, while obviously trending up, experiences a little selling pressure, and everyone freaks out and thinks a top is in place. Then a couple weeks later the market is making new highs, and the bears are back to the drawing board. Business Insider has a great write-up of so called gurus who’ve been dead wrong for several years. Highly-trained, smart, well-educated people who don’t have the ability to say: “my analysis techniques don’t work.”
I don’t get it. I was never trained to analyze the market, so I’m forced to keep things simple. I look at the charts and ask: “is the trend up or down or is the market chopping around?” Then I ask: “what groups are doing the best and which are doing the worst?” In an uptrend, I like to play the best set ups from the best groups. Within a downtrend I prefer buying inverse ETFs. Because I wasn’t trained to do this, I assume I can be wrong, and I don’t stick to my guns if the market tells me to abandon my analysis. I guess it’s easier to have some mental flexibility when you aren’t trained compared to someone who spent a lot of money and several years of their life learning at the university level. Or perhaps all these smart people who’ve been so wrong for so long don’t realize there’s a disconnect between the stock market and the economy. I don’t know. It confuses me. Being wrong is fine. Digging your heels in and being wrong for 3 or 4 years is pure insanity.
Short term I still believe anything goes.
Over the next month I still think there are some lagging breadth indicators that need to be dealt with. We need more participation.
Long term the trend is solidly up, and I still expect 2013 to be a good year.
More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers