Govt buyinmg is totally random and cannot be predicted, not to mention it will end suddenly. Only bad traders who blindly hold will make money, by ignoring either through ignorance or hope all technical and fundamental knowledge.
While that may be true, IF there is government buying, despite its randomness (which I assure you its not, the govt. doesn't just "do" things randomly) you should be able to take advantage by applying a long bias to your thinking. Approach top down by factoring in that bad news etc.. has to compete with the buying power and sheer will of the US govt.
Judging by the action on friday, or lack thereof, I'd say the equities markets haven't yet responded. About 2/3rds of publicly traded companies will report earnings in the week of January 25th and we'll see volatility pick up as anticipations start to change going into this week. By that time we willl see how the market will have interpreted yesterdays payroll numbers, together with a host of other information that came out last week. Judging by the drop in volatility, the put/call ratio, the tightening spreads on credit protection and various other indicators of sentiment we're in an overly bullish divergence. Any slack in earnings will put equities on a hair trigger and will cause this weeks economic information to be reinterpreted in a much more negative way. It often takes time before news is fully digested or shrugged off. If the market was an animal it would chew cud.
I think the question is whether the January rally was a typical January effect, or whether we were rallying up in anticipation of good numbers. Anyway, even adding 100K wouldn't be good news. That's the minimum number required every month from here on out, just to maintain a 10% unemployment level.
Gold shot up 20$ right after the employment numbers came out. So, if gold is perceived as an asset to own on bad news, and clearly gold stands to gain should the markets move up from here... I'm fairly comfortable with my position in both gold and the stocks themself.