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With all of the pundits calling for a September drop and a double dip recession, the market fooled them all–at least for one day. And the Investor’s Intelligence poll shows that investor adviser sentiment is quite bearish with almost as many bears as bulls.     This poll has been a contrary indicator, with market tops occurring when there are many more bulls (near 60%) and bottoms when there are many bears. Rarely are there more bears than bulls. IBD called Wednesday’s action a follow-through day on the rally that began last Friday. Even though the indexes I follow are still in short and long term down-trends, the GMI advanced to 3 (of 6) and the more sensitive GMI-R, to 5 (of 10).   One reason is that the IBD mutual fund index just crossed above its 50 day average, indicating that growth mutual funds are rising. This has been a bipolar market.   On Tuesday we had 151 new 52 week lows in my universe of 4,000 stocks, only to have 174 new highs on Wednesday. I have found such action is typical at turning points, until the new trend gets going. It   is a tug-of-war between bears and bulls.   In a few days we will know if this is indeed   the start of a real tradable up-trend.   Right now, it is best for me to hedge/close my short positions and to look for stocks to buy.   A lot of the stocks that I have been watching had resisted the down-trend and did well on Wednesday. Check out the stocks to the right that I have been watching. Every stock I buy is protected by a put option or a stop loss order.

Technical difficulties prevented me from posting.   In the face of a down-trend there are some stocks I have been following that are showing continued strength.   Check out the stocks in my list to the right.   Let’s see how long today’s bounce will last.

The GMI remains at 1 (of 6) and the GMI-R at 2 (of 10).   The T2108 is back to 39%, still in neutral territory.   Time to be in cash and or short. I reviewed the statistics on the past 24 short term down-trends for the QQQQ.   I found that once a down-trend lasted at least 11 days, there was a 54% chance it would last 21 days or more, and a 23% chance it would last more than 30 days. The longest short term down-trend during this period lasted 69 days.