Stock Markets Holding Just Fine...Fear Still Abounds.....

By: Jack_Steiman

High put-call readings day after day. Most folks are talking like the end of the world is here, thanks to Europe, and the inevitable fallout from defaults most guaranteed to come. People just hate stocks and the stock market. There are no good vibes running around. I don't think any of you are hearing much from the bullish side of things. If you are, you're pretty much alone, because I'm tuned in, and I don't hear a thing. People just don't feel good about things. That's sad, but it usually means things aren't as bad as they seem. That's just the way the stock market works. It goes against conventional thinking, but what we all hate, the market loves. I'm not saying we're about to embark on anything special, I'm just saying I don't think it makes too much sense to be taking a very bearish approach to things.

Maybe that's how it will play out because things will default overseas. Maybe the negative thinking is correct, although it's been wrong for well over a month now. Maybe at some point the bears get it right, and the full trade finally kicks in, but I wouldn't bet the house on it. Lots of bad days are helping the bears keep their negativity going. But that's exactly the medicine the market needs in order to try and hang in there. It keeps things up higher than the masses expect them to be able to do. So yes, things aren't good all over, but I don't think they're as bad as many are making it all out to be. Certainly the market is telling us that just may be the case.

You try to gain insight by how things look on the internals, and how things look in terms of set-ups on individual charts. Are the internals really poor meaning high volume on the selling and bad advance-decline lines versus the up days? Are there only a very few stocks showing any real good technical set-ups? If the answer is yes to one of these, and especially both of these, then one would gather that much harsher times are close at hand. I would certainly expect that myself, but I don't see that taking place. The internals aren't as bad on the downside as they are good on the upside these past many weeks. I study.

One would recognize that this would be very unlikely in a bad market. I'm not saying this is a good market, because it's not, but it's also not so bad. There are many nice bases forming as oscillators unwind lower. Few stocks are breaking down and volume on the down days is really pulling back. From the perspective of technical set-ups and market internals, the market doesn't look all that bad. I don't think the market warrants the negativity it's receiving from the talking heads out there, but of course, if you're bullish, let's enjoy hearing the negativity.

Fed Bernanke has a lot on his plate, and I don't envy any of it. He has to deal with how to keep our own back yard afloat, and keep the economy running at least a good enough speed. There's no high speed economy here, but he has to keep it humming along to some degree to prevent what everyone keeps talking about. And that's recession. The Jobs Report today was fine, but nothing to get excited about. He needs to keep this pace at least moving along, which is not easy considering the state of consumer confidence these days. To make his job infinitely harder, he has to worry about how to keep our economy charging ahead if Europe does a belly flop and some countries start to default.

His job is ridiculously hard and one has to wonder if he has the necessary tools to keep things status quo. I'm not sure but he says he does. I don't know if he's being truthful but he needs to find a way if he hasn't already. He has tricks he can use, and none of them good news longer-term as it means more stimulus, and thus, likely more debt. Let's all just hope the worst case doesn't unfold in Europe meaning he won't need to what he doesn't seem to want to. He made it clear in his last statement the other day that he doesn't need to do more now based on our own economy and that's a good thing. Again, let's hope.

The market is whipsawing us to death. At least it feels that way, but don't give too much energy to that reality as it's nothing more than the markets way of trying to eradicate the weakest hands. We all fall prey to it, but if you look at the overall action, nothing really bad is taking place. The overall action is fine trading between the top at 1292 S&P 500 and the 50-day exponential moving average at 1212. The longer we move sideways, the more folks get bearish, and the more things unwind on the oscillators. For now, we're somewhat captive to Europe. But remember, all things resolve in time.

Peace,

Jack

Jack Steiman is author of SwingTradeOnline.com ( www.swingtradeonline.com ). Former columnist for TheStreet.com, Jack is renowned for calling major shifts in the market, including the market bottom in mid-2002 and the market top in October 2007.

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