After hitting my March target of 6500 the Dow Jones rallied over the past two days thanks to reports of unexpected CitiBank profits and an announcement that the Federal Government might not seek tighter accounting regulations from the banks. Heartened by the possibility for the resumption of voodoo economic tactics, brokers yahooed their customers into believing that now was the time to buy undervalued stocks such as Bank of America Corp., General Electric Co., General Motors Corp., and Pfizer.
This surge in confidence created up to $900 billion in paper wealth without taking into account yet another month in which jobless claims rose higher than the previous month.
In other words the emperor is still wearing no clothes.
Fridays are traditionally a day for profit-taking.
The question is whether brokers will risk leaving in their stakes over the weekend.
My bet is that greed wins out.
Beware of the Ides of March.