Forget the absolute numbers, you have to correct for inflation, i.e. very weak dollar, for the numbers to have any meaning. On that basis we are still quite away from the all-time high. I'm with LT701 on this one. In reality, earnings have not been very good, but he market does not care. Do not buy into the analyst nonsense of revising downward so that expectations can be met or exceeded. That's just more of the usual analyst crap. Morningstar, a fairly conservative and independent outfit has the current market as close to fairly valued. The only thing unusual here is the long string of up days without pulling back to the 20 ma hourly, but we did get back close to the 20 the other day. The great advantage of day trading is being flat at the end of the day. Then it really does not matter what the market does, though i agree with those who have said that they would like to see a little more volatility as it has been difficult trading on a number of days. But one can always prune the roses when the market refuses to cooperate. You don't have to trade. It is rather pointless to try and understand the why of the market, and in the final analysis the why does not matter. Next Wednesday may be interesting.
A crude chart of Dow accounting for the dollar index....yeah the maths is a bit shaky but there's no denying this new high is not one at all from a dollar value perspective. Also intraday divergence between 3 Dow indices on the left.
Average P/E of the S&P index in 1999-2000 was 30+ We're only @ about 15-17ish with much higher "growth". Fundamentally, we're still doin alright. In fact, I think it's going to be hard to kill this trend until we raise rates like we did back then (2000). Right now market risk/reward in many people's eyes is still much better than the RF rate. (on paper that is) Volitility proceeds market tops. Until we see something closely resembling such, I think it's safe to say that this is going to continue for at least a little while longer. On a side note, The key is to just lose the "bias" (as hard as it is to do) and take the psychology out of this game. Figuring out a systematic approach to letting profits ride and cutting losers is the key to trading this market regardless of market direction.
which is precisely why trading is so difficult. The permabears will be amongst the only ones to take the trade, and they'll be lucky if it pays for their past losses.
He hasn't done anything, he hasn't said anything and a lot of people are still talking about what a great job he's doing. Shit, I probably wouldn't do anything either, under those circumstances. I have a hunch he feels like "don't fix it if it ain't broke" and he's going to keep on saying nothing and doing nothing until absolutely necessary (at which point it will be too late). He's in a comfortable spot with the "do nothing" program and he's sticking with it.
This prolonged rally is a bit weird, no doubt about it, but several indices are showing a rally through the Feb highs, a pullback an test of those highs followed by a rally, which is pretty bullish.