Yes, the earnings background looks excellent, but could it be that it just is not going to look much better than that? Could it be the market is sensing slow but steady petering of consumer demand? Note that consumer related stocks are some of the weakest sectors.
I don't know which stocks made new highs on the Naz according to Yahoo Financials (they say 136, but the Naz site shows only 15 and that is a recent low while the Naz hit 1990 today). Maybe the other 116 are special situations like convertible bonds, etf etc. Does someone know how to get the list of 136 new high Yahoo quotes? This is probably one of the more telling divergences and why I saty in the bearish camp here. We did achieve the 100 or so Naz ramp I was expecting from the recent lows under 1900, and are in the dangerous 1975/2011 zone.