While stock prices have been going down since the market broke out of the Wicked Wedge on February 10th, I have been watching a little side-show.

Notice that our Market Timing Graph shows a sporadic price pattern of four huge down days which have occurred since February 9th intermixed with a preponderance of relatively small price movements. On many of these days, the market opened to the upside; then went down. This performance is quite different than the sharp sell-offs seen in October and November. Today's activity is a good example.

The February jobs report, released this morning, showed that another 651,000 non-farm jobs were lost in February. Moreover, downward revisions of an additional 161,000 losses were made for December and January. The unemployment rate hit 8.1%, yet stocks prices opened to the upside. The reason given for this counterintuitive response was that traders expected a much worse report. The side-show I've been watching is that of the classic bear market mentality that has taken over. Investors are refusing to accept bad economic news at face value. They're rationalizing it to create reasons to buy stocks. Look for this behavior as we go forward. You'll see it happen over and over again.

Each of the big down days we've seen recently were triggered by something out of Washington. The biggest up day on February 24th was caused by Dr. Ben Bernanke's testimony to Congress, which wasn't even factual. Investors are dying to buy stocks and any scrap of good news, true or not, will serve the purpose. This market is Itching to Rally.