The Developing Rally

The short side was a fun and wild ride.  But it's time to look past it and focus on the next step.  Oil, gas, and other commodities keep running.  The Fed is standing ready at every chance to keep the market from dropping any further with either liquidity injections or rate cuts.  This makes it very difficult to stay short the market for more then a few days.  So now that we did get some nice action to the downside, the focus has to shift to looking for setups on the long side.  Bearish sentiment continues to rise, whether it's the bull/bear ratio's, put/call ratio's, short interest, or anywhere else you look.

 

We may be in recession but the market may not care.  If this is as bad is it's going to get, the market will look past it and start to price in an ultimate recovery down the road when the past rate cuts will finally start to make a difference.

 

Looking at the charts it's not pretty outside of the sectors I talked about earlier.  But it doesn't have to be at this point.  Those sectors have stellar fundamentals with a rising tide behind them.  They are to this market what tech was to the 90's, and there are plenty of stocks to pick from.

 

What I foresee is a rally of a few months to clean up the technicals of the other sectors, followed by another major correction/mini bear to setup a possible longer term bull.  This would not be out of the ordinary for a market coming out of a bear market.

 

So stop listening to the headlines and do some work.  If we get a follow through, the market may present a nice opportunity on the long side in the above sectors.  Worst case, it doesn't develop, but you get practice preparing a list.  But for now, it's best to watch from the sidelines, and wait for the Fed to do it's thing next Tuesday.

 

PS

 

Don't forget about the short side.  Keep a ready list there too just in case the Fed or the government manges to bungle it.