It's off to the races, guys. The S&P 500 had its biggest rise in 60 years over the last ten days - up 22 per cent. The Japanese Nikkei is up 20 per cent from its March 10th, 20 year low.
Of course there are a few boring bar stewards who say: 'It's a rally not necessarily the start of a bull market'. The indexes always go up and down in jagged spikes, never in a straight line. But the bottom has been reached. From now on the trend is up, up, up.
One thing the pundits are right about is that the stock markets' behaviour is several months ahead of the real economy.
Companies will continue to tread carefully though, in the semiconductor sector, there's TSMC, AMD, TI and others looking pretty robust all of a sudden. AMD is leading the semiconductor stock price rally - up 50 per cent in a fortnight.
Whether or not Q1 figures look good, or so-so, will determine whether this rally is a 30 per cent rally or a 50 per cent rally. But once the companies start reporting good trading figures, watch the indices will soar. They have a long way to go: The Dow, now at 7600, once topped 14,000; the FTSE, now under 4000, once almost reached 7,000.
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