Bracing For Ben's Text...

Trading volume was light today as the Dow continued to move sideways, closing upwards by 58.7 points. Investors were obviously bracing for what Uncle Ben is going to say about the economy tomorrow afternoon. Some investors also headed for safety as long term bond yields drop a little. In fact, the Dow is going to form a short term neutral trend right there on the 8000 points level if this goes on for a few days more but I do not think that is going to happen with the Durable Goods Order coming up on Thursday and GDP on Friday (see economic calendar). Oddly, the CBOE total equities put call ratio (see economic calendar) has also gone 7 straight days without going up, suggesting increasing trading in call options.

On the macro level, there are also signs of bottoming all over the world as economic numbers started beating expectations. Please don't get me wrong, the cloud of recession is going to affect all our lives all of 2009, no doubts about that. But from the way things are going and the way things had gone, I expect to see the NUMBERS start to recover in 2009 along with the stock market.