Market Commentary from April 18th

This week I'm going to use an optical illusion to help make a point about the publics' perception of what is happening in the markets.

Instead of Bulls and Bears, perhaps the market is like a frog or a horse. 

It simply depends on your perspective. 

As you look at the picture on the right, you'll see a frog sitting on the edge of a pond. 

However, if you turn the picture (or your head), you'll see a horse that is poking his head out of the stable.

Things are not always as they seem on first glance.

Markets At The Crossroads:  Decision Time:

As it stands, the Markets have been acting quite well.  They continue to rally, even when there is bad news in the marketplace.  From a technical point of view, though, we are at a crossroads. 

I prepared the following chart to show the arguments for both the bull and the bear cases.  It is a daily chart of the S&P 500.  The market's downtrend line, since October, is marked in blue.  The red horizontal line shows that this is the fourth time we've hit this area since late January.

The question is whether we go up or down from here.

Like a serial cliff-hanger, we'll have to tune-in next week to see if anything gets resolved.