The optimist would say we're in the early stage of a broad rally, the pessimist would say this is a dead-cat bounce and markets are going to head lower as oil heads toward $50 a barrel.
When all was said and done, the market showed its resilience once again, ... The market performed well despite today's extremely weak consumer sentiment number. Investors seem to be looking over a softer economy for the next few months towards a stronger economy to start 2006.
The rally the past few days shows investors are willing to look past this period of uncertainty toward a pickup in growth in early 2006. It's a pretty optimistic viewpoint and that could change when the data comes in.
I think the results from AMD and Apple after the close should help boost sentiment toward technology stocks, which have been on a bit of a roll for a few weeks,
The tone in the market is a little better. We saw strong gains in Japan as they move toward an end to quantitative easing.