Coolhand's Market Analysis

The last day of the quarter may have been mixed, but aside from today's performance it was the best 1st quarter for stocks since 1998. Can you believe it?

So the bulls are holding their position going into tomorrow's payrolls report. And it's the 1st of the month too, which as I mentioned yesterday has been largely positive since last September. But this past March saw a hard decline on that date, so I'm not sure what to expect. But the strength has been impressive and certainly suggests that regardless of what the next day or two of trading brings, the longer term still looks bullish.

In market data today, initial jobless claims came in at 388,000, which shows improvement in the jobs picture, but was slightly higher than anticipated by analysts.

The Chicago PMI for March came in at 70.6, which was a bit lower than expected, while February factory orders dipped 0.1%. That was lower than the forecast 0.4% economists were looking for.

Fed officials seem to be making a lot of comments of late, most hinting at tightening Fed policy early, and today saw more comments along those lines. Minneapolis Fed President Kocherlakota, said the Fed funds rate may need to increase by 75 basis points in late 2011.

I'm not sure of the reason for these string of public comments, but I'm sure there's a motive. In any event, the market didn't seem to have much of a reaction to it. And here's a bit of interesting reading to go along with my comments. http://www.cnbc.com/id/42362299


Oil prices rose again today to settle over $106 dollars a barrel. A new 2 year high.

Let's take a look at the charts:



NAMO and NYMO remain in a buy condition.



Same for NAHL and NYHL.



TRIN and TRINQ are both flashing sells.



BPCOMPQ ticked higher still and remains on a buy.

So the Seven Sentinels are mixed, but still look bullish. This keeps the system in a buy condition.

Maybe the market wants to see the jobs numbers tomorrow before it makes another big move. We've ramped up very quickly since last week and while we're certainly due for a pullback, it's no slam dunk that it will happen. And consider that the 1st of the month and Monday's tend to be green and we have that one-two combo coming up right now.

Or is this a good opportunity to catch market participants off-guard since everyone knows the next two days are a virtual lock for higher prices?