Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[pstuartb]

You know, Zeev, even though we have all these indicators lining up like they did at previous bottoms, it just doesn't feel like those bottoms. We've got the 10 and 21dmas on the p/c ratio at extremes, the relative decline on some of the index BPIs is as sharp as they've even been, nasi has falling off a cliff and is approaching bear market lows, the percent of naz stocks above their 50dma are near the October 2002 lows, and a host of other indicators are all at extremes similar to at least March 2003. Some are as bad as the July and October 2002 bottoms.

At nearly every one of those bottoms we saw folks like Tice and Fleck getting plenty of attention, bearish articles were in the mainstream press, there were plenty of "obvious" reasons why the markets couldn't go up, even Maria Bartiromo would come out and suggest shorting.

I see almost none of that pervading gloom now. I see a number of professional technicians pointing to the same oversold conditions that have produced bounces in the past, confident that the markets will have another significant leg up as a result of these TA factors. I don't remember that at past bottoms. Maybe I'm reading different stuff now than I did a couple of years ago, but right now it doesn't feel nearly as scary as major bottoms in the past.