Are We There Yet?

Is the economy coming back? Is the worst over? Can we pull our money out from our mattresses and any other places we may have stuffed it?

Well, the good news is...maybe.

The bad news is...if you pulled your money out of the market already and have it sitting on the sidelines, you may have missed the only upward climb of the year.

I think all the money that has been injected into the system and Obama's ability to sound (generally) calm and that he has a plan has at least calmed enough people who realized there might be some bargains to be had. However, I think they have been had. So there may not be any more easy money to make in this market. We are now about 20% above the low points of the Dow, Nasdaq & S&P and the Nasdaq is actually (barely - 0.63%) positive for the year, and although that generally signals a bull market, I think we just recovered from over selling.

From this point forward, we will need positive results from the bailout / stimulus and that might take a while. We could also have the dropping of the other shoe (resetting of Adjustable Rate Mortgages, Iran, etc.) which would cause another flurry of selling, but I think we will be sticking about where we are. However, that doesn't mean the volatility has subsided, just that we will keep returning to about the place we are now.

Because the voting public looks for signs, the markets rising in the same timeframe as the release of the President's budget and Geithner's plan for a public/private investment in the toxic loans probably makes a lot of people feel calmer about the potential for those plans. No doubt that the Obama Administration has bitten off a lot, but there was a lot on their plate.

Stay tuned.