The “buy the dip” mentality is in full swing right now. And it’s being bolstered by the “window dressers” doing what they can to pretty up their portfolios for quarter end. Right now bad news is good news for stocks. The market has shrugged off renewed European financial concerns, bad news from bellwethers like Caterpillar and FedEx, falling bond yields, a dour Dr. Copper, the sequester and hints at the Fed that their bond buying may not last forever.
Considering all of this and the fact that new highs are only a fraction of a percent away I wouldn’t for a second bet against stocks right now. In fact, it looks like the S&P 500 has made a decent base for a push to new highs sometime really soon. But that’s all just short-term noise. Over the short run anything can happen. What we care about is not what stocks will do next week it’s what they will do over the next 6-18 months.
Along those lines, I was interested to see Fred Hickey, editor of “The High Tech Strategist”, today tweet that, “for the first time in a long time,” he’s shorting big tech stocks. Fred’s probably the most thorough and knowledgeable investor in the sector I know of and his opinion confirms the bearish technical pattern forming in the Nasdaq 100.
So while I don’t want to bet against new highs for the S&P, I think we’ll soon see them. But I wouldn’t want to bet on them lasting for any length of time, either. Ultimately, I’m happy to just sit out and see what happens.