Alot Going On Under The Surface............

Another positive day for the market isn't anything unusual, but under the surface, the action was a bit different from what we've been seeing. There was heavy speculative action in lower-priced stocks, many of which are in sectors that have been troubled, like REITS, title insurance, credit services and mortgage investment.

We had some strong action in some of the more standard names as well, like HPQ, GOOG, AMZN and GS, but the interest in lower-priced stocks is an illustration of how aggressive speculation has become and how little fear there is out there.

The conventional wisdom is that when market players are anxious chasing highly speculative names, it is a sign that a top is near. The logic is that folks are overconfident and are so unconcerned about risk that they are becoming reckless.

This isn't the first time we've had this sort of speculative action in low-priced and low-quality stocks since the March low. It has happened several times, and while we did have some slow periods subsequently, it obviously didn't harm the market for long.

The buyers just aren't going away yet, and while it is easy to try to color the action as somehow being indicative of toppy action, we still don't have any negative price action to support the bears. Until the market actually starts to show some weakness, talk about a top is meaningless..........