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It has been half a century since the shortest Treasury Bill was 1/2% - one of many notable extremes from a shortened week. Contrary to my quoting the Trader's Almanac that when Easter falls in March, both parenthetical days of surrounding the weekend tend to be down. To have back to back up days totalling the most points since the '03 bottom flies in the face of that small sampling anecdote.
Cases can be made for the market bottom being in or for just a shortcovering oversold bump after the Fed's accommodation. Short term it is hard to ignore the bearish sentiment and solid upside momentum of the last few days. Although I stopped following the hourly ISEE call/put ratio, I noticed today it was screaming a near-200 Sell signal, yet the market ignored it today. New lows to new highs last week were 13:1 and 23:1 for the NYSE and Nasdaq, and the McClellan Summation Index is very low exhibiting a weak Advance/Decline period. Tom McClellan will no doubt be addressing this topic at next month's TSAA Seminar (see tsaasf.org for details).
Making a strong Bullish case are the newsletter surveys, the record CBOE put/call ratio, record short interest on the NYSE. Money markets, even with low-going-lower rates are 50% greater than the bottom of '03 -$3.4T. The Bullish per cent went from a Sell to a Buy signal in 2 weeks.
ETFs had huge inflows last week, yet domestic mutual funds are showing 10 months of outflows, more than after 1987. Here are the numbers:
MktSentiment. 3/21/2008 Last Week..... .5Yr.HI...... LOW

DJIA ………. 12361………11951………..14093..............7286
Nasdaq………. 2258………..2212…………2810.............1114
S&P500…….. 1329……….1288…………1561………..776
CBOE Eq. put/call …94………….94……………..92-1/08…..........46-1/03

VIX ………. 26.6………..31.2…….…….44.. 9/02 bu........10.0-7/05 br
Intrade.com-
Recession% 76………….74……………76(bullish)….31(bearish)
McClellan Osc………-7…………-56……………91-5/04 br......(81)-5/04bu
McClelSum………-627…………-477…………..1568-6/03.......-917

Newsletter Surveys:
Inv.Intel -Bull:…..…30.9……….31………..62.9-12/04br......35-6/06bu
Bear:………… 44.7………43.3………… 38.2-3/03.......16-6/03

AAII-Bull/Bear ……25.2/54.3…..20.4/59.2……..n/a n/a
MarketVane Bulls…46………….43…………. 74br..............24bu
IBD: Short Interest- 9.35…………9.7……………10.3………. 4.0
Public/NYSE Spec.-…8.74………10……….21bl…………..1.0br
Birinyi Blogger
Bull/Bear Poll ………50/25……26/53
Bullish%- …………32buy…..27……….…88 -2/04br.....19bu
*Insider corporate sellers.6:1…..5:1………..97…………..5
Sectors: Most Buyers: Finance (1/3 of total)
Most Sellers: Finance

With record numbers of dollars coming out of Money Market Funds, mostly into the crowded trade of short term bonds, anyone who has a minimal knowledge of covered call options and/or an interest in hedging stock market exposure might want to check out: brentleonard.com for an alternative strategy that is low-risk as well as highly rewarding. For those of you wanting more details and actual trading results, a new book is available for $14.95 at Amazon.com: Zero (IN)Tolerance

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