Once again the bears figured it was curtains. I am talking about yesterday's session when we saw the worst decline in "ages," where the market ended "hideously," where the bull was on its "last legs."
Then this morning when the futures were down seven and looking real ugly, the headlines only accelerated the negativity. We heard about how Costco (COST) heralded the "get out now" crowd while Snap (SNA) called the top with is huge move up.
And then what happens?
Snap continues to go higher, spurred by $500 million in Comcast (CMCSA) money at the $17 IPO price. COST has no followers whatsoever and we get a last-minute move into the black. Plus oil reversed and went higher even as the rig count continued to climb. (Costco and Comcast are part of TheStreet's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio.)
The market just refuses to comply with the negative script, the one that says a decline of 100 Dow points is the beginning of something big, something terrible, and the overbought condition can just crush the darned thing because it is all one big short-squeeze anyway.
But it isn't.
It's real buying and it's buying with money that hasn't been in this market for ages.
Why?
We had a couple of standout reasons today. First, the airlines are emblematic of the moment. Delta (DAL) reported some just OK monthly numbers, but then the Department of Transportation removed some consumer protection regulations for the airlines and the stocks soared. This again is an example of how I think deregulation is better for the stock market than the actual changes in taxes. So many industries got hit with so many new regulations that, when you see them repealed, you think, "Wow, what can these companies earn if the government were to just get out of the way?"
Obama didn't put through regulations for the sake of punishment. I believe there were good intentions. But when it comes to the stock market, these were dreadful.
So you get the pop.
The second reason? We keep getting better numbers. We got some strong truck-build numbers. Those have been terrible; they look to be turning.
We got stronger oil.
Third, we had Fed Chair Janet Yellen sounding confident, again, because the economy's better.
These control. They make it so it's not just a gigantic, baseless win streak. They are why yesterday really was a garden-variety pullback and not the beginning of a tsunami of selling.
They are what you need to think of when you go home and ponder what will happen next week ahead of what I think could be a very strong employment reading and another rate hike as we return to normalcy ... at least on the short end.
