Bullishness, tempered with a touch of fear
The bulls are running on Wall Street, despite occasional pauses for refreshment, and the bears are furtively covering their short positions. The proximate cause for the spurt in stock indices last week was the NAPM report on non-manufacturing businesses. Market participants usually ignore this report, but the nice jump in the index was a sufficient excuse for investors to give vent to their positive sentiments. Also, there was some winking and nodding from a couple of top tech executives, which cheered receptive minds. However, the employment numbers, on Friday, were lousy and dampened the partying mood. Still, there is sufficient momentum in the market to carry it forward for a while and, of course, technology stocks are leading the rally. Never mind that the valuations are wacky, but fund managers don’t want to be left out and need to do some window-dressing at year-end. Most of all, they don’t want to be caught holding a lot of
