Short Notice (two weeks)

“Relative to November which was much more of a technical scare, with the money market system and commercial paper system, this is a market that’s consistently leaking and trying to find a home,” says Dean Curnutt, president of Macro Risk Advisors. “The low could be as low as 600, in a lot of fits and starts.” Given the recent market action, that could come within a span of two weeks. Investors are reticent to get in the way of the declines, as cash levels have risen beyond levels usually associated with selling climaxes, and the market’s attempts at rallies on the back of announcements from China, the Federal Reserve, or related to the Obama Administration’s housing plan have been fleeting. “The markets are not going to discount the benefits of these programs until they see them start to work,” says Jim McDonald, chief investment strategist at Northern Trust Global Investments. “There have been a litany of those trades over the last 15 months and nobody has made money on the long side in doing that, and so there is going to be a desire to see evidence before we start to turn that around.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2009/03/05/four-at-four-pain/