Yeah, I know you don't want to believe it, but you can't convince me that it isn't true. First, dismiss the market averages for a moment and focus on a simple concept...a useful definition. A "rally" is a period of time where more stocks are rising than are falling. Now that is certainly easy to deal with. Now let's look at the well concealed facts. The statistics that Wall Street doesn't want you to follow.

 

From March of 2000 (the end of the dot com fiasco) to right now, midday, today. Daily advancing issues on the NYSE outnumber declining issues by 103,500. Not impressed? Trading days with positive breadth outnumber negative days by 127. That's a little more meaningful, representing about a third of a year more in the plus column, or 56% of the trading days. And then there's the difference between issues hitting new highs and those hitting new lows.  Are you ready? Issues hitting new highs led the race by nearly 80,000. More than twice as many new one year highs than new one year lows. That's impressive!

 

Now why I ask you, can't you find thousands of Mutual Funds with positive numbers for the past five years? Wanna hear about the pre-2000 numbers? In 1999 (the last year that Wall Street wants you to think of as a good year), there were 40,300 more down ticks than up ticks (10%); 40% more negative trading days (105 up and 146 down); and more than twice as many stocks hit new one year lows than new one year highs. Could it be that the mainstream institutions are just a bit to speculative and self-serving?

 

Who is kidding who? How long will Wall Street keep it's head in the sand and pretend (as well as explain why!) that it has just been impossible to make money in the stock market. Maybe they have just forgotten how. Have you?