6:26 p.m. EDT April 17, 2009 'Earnings not as bad as feared' listed among reasons to get bullish "The debate has shifted from is this a bear-market rally or something more substantial to questions of how much higher do we go in this current move, and I think we have substantial room to the upside," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co. Hogan said he believes the current path of least resistance is to the upside, offering three reasons for his bullish take: After a second week of results, "it's clear we underestimated corporate America's ability to have earned money in the first quarter," Hogan said. "It's important to realize a majority of the early part of the rally has been short covering, and we're just now seeing a modicum of money coming into the market," he said. "There is a lot of buying power sitting on the sidelines, waiting for investment vehicles other than cash," said Hogan, pointing to recently released data showing $3.8 trillion sitting in money-market funds, illustrating pent-up demand for equities. Nick Kalivas, an analyst at MF Global Research, offered his own list of reasons to be bullish, part of which echoes Hogan's rundown: The Dow Transport Index has broken above the 3,000 level. "The sector is a leading indicator of economic growth and may be responding to the outlook for improved activity and inventory replenishment," said Kalivas. The flow of financial news has been running at or ahead of depressed expectations, said Kalivas, who pointed to "benign results" from J.P. Morgan & Chase Co. (JPM) and "favorable guidance" from Regions Financial Corp. (RF) . In addition, credit-card issuers "failed to shake the market with delinquency data," while the bankruptcy of General Growth Properties Inc. seems to have gone unnoticed, "which may suggest that the market is positioned for poor news in the commercial-real-estate sector," he said. Earnings from Nokia Corp. (NOK) bode well for Apple Inc. (AAPL) "also provides a reason to own the market," said Kalivas. Bottom hit? Since March 6, when the S&P 500 fell to the "devilish" intraday bear-market low of 666, wrote Ed Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research Inc., "I've been starting to count our blessings." He said he expects a test of the Jan. 6 high of 934.70, which would reflect a 40.3% advance from the March 6 low. "After a brief and possibly nasty correction," he said, "the S&P 500 could rally to 1,000 before the end of May." On Thursday, the S&P 500 Financials Index of 80 banks, insurers and investment firms climbed 16% to a three-month high, leaving it up 75% since its March low. Yardeni said this performance suggests financials have bottomed. "If so, then so has the overall stock market," he added. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/sto...-8BC2-4AA9-A2D4-A004E3E15AF1}&dist=TNMostRead
Another stupid joker on the lose, these guys are giving me a good laugh this weekend, even this past week I heard about all the cash sitting on the "SIDELINES" waiting to jump in. Let me just say how false this is, I remember when the DOW was falling from the 14k level and every bull came out yelling that the money on the "SIDELINES" would eventually be put to work at dow 13k, 12k, 11k, 10k, 9k, 8k and so on, I am so tired of hearing about money on the "SIDELINES" waiting to come into the market and pump it up even higher, its a joke, no such thing.
I agree on people being skeptical. More than I've ever seen. Being a Broker, and IAR is, well... Different in this environment.