Of Course, Eventually Some May Want REALIZED Profits....

It was one of those days when we gapped up to start the day and then just drifted around and did nothing after the open. We held on to the opening gain, but we didn't gain any further momentum after that. Breadth was solid once again, but volume slowed quite a bit. Our minor selling to end last week was forgotten and the action, once again, felt extremely complacent. There were no real worries or concerns, and we even had talk about the virtues of buy-and-hold-investing. This market is apparently never going to go down again, so why wouldn't we just load up and enjoy the ride? The difficulty is that even the non-technicians are aware that this market is very extended. However, we aren't pulling back, so that keeps sucking in those who are tired of underperforming. There are only two more trading days left in the quarter, and there is some tremendous anxiety among money managers who can't keep up this market that never turns down and allows them to buy. I believe there is a good chance of some profit taking before the quarter ends. Most of the window-dressing pressure has come to an early end, and there are market players who want to actually lock in gains rather than just have unrealized profits on their sheets. The market continues to do nothing wrong, other than to act very complacent and stay very extended. It is hard to be aggressively bearish when the action is like this, unless you are a contrarian, and the contrarians have been fighting this upward drift for weeks now........