While its difficult to foresee a major rally here

its even more difficult to entertain the notion of a crash from these levels.

So for now it appears we are destined to be range bound unless some major catalyst jars this market out of its nervous nelly act, and be decisive.

Personally, i dont view it as the markets fault. I view the undecidedness as purely the fault of this heretofor unprecendented intervention by our government and the fed. Its funny. evrybody wants the gubmint to backstop everything. Bu tthen the pundits bicth intervention doesn't work. or least the kind thats doled out in porkiness.


The problem that though is how in the hell do you value any company out there in the current environment: ???

Earnings (reported) are dropping like a rock,
+ derivatives are still uncontained and unregulated, (over $400 trillion worth at last count, which has been awhile - nobody knows the real #)
+ nobody including banks has to truly report the crapola they have on their books, let alone the shady deals done on a napkin that will never see the light of day unless they become profitable, and even then those are under reported to avoid taxes,
+ the consumer is shell shcoked and though they are out in droves at the stores and malls, they aren't opening their purse strings for much,
+ few cars are being bought
+ few homes are being bought
+those two drive our entire economy either directly or indirectly,
+ inventory gluts exist everywhere as far as the eye can see,
+ we have at least $20 trillion in debt now, federally speaking,
+ worldwide portfolios have dropped by 50%,
+ 20 million chinese are no longer consumers as they have been layed off in the past few months (thats the "reported" number anyway)
+ Same has happened in every single country out there,
+ europes banks are actually in worse shape than US banks (can you belueve more insolvent than even ours ?)

So how do you predict with any level of even rough 50/50 certainty the earnings streams of the SNP 500 even, let alone the rest of the 10,000 or more stocks out there in the US unirverse ?

So until then we are in a range, and i do seriously doubt its a bottom formation of any sort. I still think if it goes anywhere though we see some sort of a rally into maybe May, then reality hits and we drop massively to new lows.

If we were to suddenly drop massively to new lows in teh next week or two, get it out of the way, we might actully be better off and get a sustainable bounce that could take us into next year.

im seeing the drrip drip slow, headfake up, and then the death spiral take hold once again to a new leg down.

cash seems to be a great place to be right now, but a lot of ammo is supposedly on the sidelines.