The bears gave it a decent try, and breadth is still fairly poor at 1,900 gainers to 3,400 decliners, but I suspect the shorts are going to wait for some more headlines to hit from Europe before they give it another go. The bulls are pushing again, and the risk of an upward spike on all or some of the upcoming announcements from the European Central Bank and the summit meeting are quite high. On the other hand, you can bet the bears are thinking "sell the news."
I'm inclined to try the short side myself, but only on positive news headlines. I have no doubts we will be seeing some and we have already used up a tremendous amount of gas on the last dozen or so. There is no way I want to try to build shorts before major European news events.
Longer term, I still like the upside into the end of the year. Some back-and-forth after the big one-way move will help the charts, and we might actually see the focus shift from Europe, finally, to some individual stock-picking. It probably is bad karma to even contemplate some good old fashioned end-of-the-year momentum action in individual names, but I still have some hope that macro may take a backseat again someday.
I don't expect to see too much happen the rest of the day, and for me that is good, since I have to have some programming done on my new hearing device. Good luck the rest of the day. I'll see you in the morning.
