Not So Fast…

The rally in stocks this week, particularly in the tech leaders, was pretty fantastic.  And while there was a lot to like, Alan Abelson is thrilled to be armed with some intel that says “not so fast!”

From Barron’s:

Yet, even while the Dow and the other indices kept the winning streak alive at week’s end, there were signs that more than a few bulls decided to cash in profits or were reluctant to carry longs over the weekend, as declines outnumbered advances in the final session…

The latest monthly report put out by our old friend and smart-as-a-whip market watcher, Steve Leuthold, avers there’s still significant downside market risk and suggests an ultimate bottom for the S&P 500 somewhere around 955-995; it closed Friday at 1,216.01.

As the report says, historically, non-recession-related bear markets, which presumably is what we’ve been experiencing, are shorter in duration than recession-related bear markets, but the magnitude of the decline is roughly the same.

Alas, as it wryly points out, “Losing the same amount in half the time is little consolation.”

There’s an awful lot of room between between here and 950, yet that number continues coming up everywhere you look these days.

Take Abelson with a grain of salt, as usual; he is perpetually on the hunt for research that confirms his curmudgeonly bias, just kind of his schtick.

Source:

Vulnerable Powerhouse? (Barron’s)