Tap trumped the data.

At  beginning of the day, you would think the bear is roaring back, and with a lot of amunitions in its pawn.   Consumer confidence is down,  existing home sale slowest in several years.  and especially, Target and Lowe warned the lower sale on 3q.  Nothing can be worse than these.  This is because consumer spending has been the driving force for the current bull market, the biggest concern with housing bubble was the sagging spirit of the consumers.  The lower sale from TGT and LOWE confirmed the suspension that dropping house price and tight credit has eaten into the pocket of the consumers and put the damp on the incoming holiday sales...

In a logical/conventional thinkings, these news hit the bull where hurt the most, and the market deserve a pull back to factor in the lower earning outlooks..

yet, the market was resilent, at times even heroic facing these adversities.  At the end,both DOW and NASDAQ were proudly in the green.

One cliche in the WALL Street was "do not fight the tap", when tap is strong, and when it defies the conventional wisdow, it actually is trying to tell you something..  that is, collectively, there are more buyers than sellers. or at least
the sellers are much more reluctant than the buyers..     in a technical term, the overhead resistance is weak.  

One reason, as indicated in previous post, was the quartely ritual of window dressing, so, the stronger stock get stronger and weaker ones get weaker, and if you look at today's market to see where the gain comes from, it comes from so called "growth stock", aka, the higher flying stock, exactly as expected...

So, do not fight the tap and go with the flow ( do not become a hero in a greek tragedy :) ).   keep your strong stock, and get out of your weak ones..   we should be able to ride the rising wave of mutual fund's buying to the end of the month, until then, the market is living in its own world, and reality is in a totally different dimension.