Bulls Thank Michael Dell For Saving The Day…

The
bulls finally got a savior
and it came in the unlikely form of Michael Dell.
The company that bears his name gave positive guidance after the close last
night and that lit the fuse of the kindling that had been piling up as the
bears feasted.



Wall Street had come to expect that the only news companies put out these
days was bad news, so the surprisingly upbeat outlook from Dell

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was indeed a welcomed relief for the battered bulls. The fact
that Yahoo
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and Alcoa

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also had good news has been enough to breathe life back into a number
of stocks.

The volatility indexes that we track so closely have given ground, a sign
that there is less demand for insurance, but hardly wholesale belief that
the worst is over. The VIX is down to
36.85%, but that’s still sky-high. Our work shows that the unprecedented
sustained high vols are not inhibiting speculators in the least.

The bull spreads we profiled yesterday in our column are already moving in
our favor, as Rational Software Corp.
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has surged another 1 11/16 and I2 Technologies

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is trading up another 2 3/8 to 16 9/16 (10:15 am CST).

I’ve heard some surprisingly bullish comments from folks at the Chicago
COMDEX show. I don’t think their optimism or today’s rally means the bottom
is in, but the relief rally has been robust. Now we’ll just have to see if
it is sustainable, or a bust.

Talk
about it at TradingMarkets World