Will China cut rates tonight? It sure better. Or at least this weekend. Today, we saw a walk-up on China plays that was so stark that even when the market was getting hammered, even when Joy Global JOYG was getting its numbers cut, we were seeing upside action.
Today may have been one of the weirder days we have had in ages. We had some Italian banks down limit and heard all sorts of negative stuff about Europe. In addition, the President was bashing the oil companies and we saw weak employment claims.
But the market was still able to summon a rally, and I think that's because the "China on" trade came roaring back.
That, plus the remarkable exploding IPOs, including Millennial Media (MM), which is the ultimate ad-serving play for mobile, the last frontier of the Internet.
I think today showed that we are still in a market that allows you to buy the dips, particularly the multi-day dips. We are in rescue mode in 2012, meaning that something comes to your rescue if you venture into the area of what's down for a couple of days. Consider even the oil stocks. Those actually came roaring back, even though oil's been just awful.
I think this just says, once again, that 2012 is different from 2011. Instead of shooting stocks first and then not even bothering to ask questions, you buy the stocks that are shot and just wait for the bounce back.
It has worked all quarter And it worked again today.