How Stocks Rally Without Bulls’ Help

By Rick Ackerman, GoldSeek

Yesterday’s failed rally demonstrated once again that short-covering remains the only force capable of pushing stocks higher on a given day. It also showed that there are no longer enough nervous bears around to drive the market into a sustainable uptrend.  In this latest show of false strength, the Dow Industrials achieved maximum loft about midway into Tuesday’s session, when they were up about 100 points. But the set-up for this bull-less rally came the night before. As is nearly always the case, activity in the electronic index futures was used to catalyze buying urgency on the next day’s opening.  Notice in the chart below how the E-Mini S&P futures were actually down significantly Monday night. Shortly after midnight EST, eight hours after night trading began, the E-Mini S&P hit a low of 1081.00, down 11.25 points from the previous day’s settlement price. At that point, the futures were predicting that the Dow Industrials would open down almost 100 points on Tuesday.

Read more….