What It Is
Monday’s key feature: the heaviest
Monday turnover in the Naz since April 17.
Is it or isn’t it?
A brand new bull market, that is.
Here’s a much more apropos
question:
“Does it really matter?”
For traders, it shouldn’t matter
whatsoever.
The reason is that, in theory, until
the Comp takes out its March 10 peak of 5132, it will remain a bear.
For only then will it be known, in
theory, that a brand new bull market began on such-and-such date.
The hard fact about the market is that
they don’t ring a bell at the bottom.
That means that there is risk all
around you — at all times, in all trends, and at all points within a trend.
By the time you are absolutely
“convinced” that a market has bottomed, chances are that your
insistence on that extra proof will have cost you a good deal in terms of lost
opportunities, i.e. stocks that have already broken out of bases and rolled up
fat gains, establishing themselves as leaders.
In other words, you’re paying an awful
lot of premium for that “insurance policy” that keeps you in cash
until you’re absolutely “convinced” that the bear is gone.
The reason why I trade the
intermediate-term trend almost exclusively is that I believe it to be much more
recognizable than, say, the short- and long-term trends.
With that in mind, I won’t get dragged
into the debate over whether it’s a brand new bull market or not.
As Mark Boucher likes to say,
“don’t know and don’t care.”
Remember, the intermediate-term trader
concerns himself or herself with the intermediate trend — several weeks to
several months — not the long-term trend, which is itself comprised of a series
of intermediate uptrends and intermediate downtrends.
No, all I care about is “what
is.”
Not “what will be.”
I like the action of the Naz since the
Nov. 30 low.
And I very much like the action of the
leaders.
I don’t need to wait for more proof to
wade back in, though I do need more proof to
dive back in.
And I certainly don’t need to worry if
this is a new bull market or not.
It’s a tradable intermediate-term
advance.
For me, that’s all that counts.
It’s what it is.