The headlines are all decidedly bearish, there is nowhere to go but down they say, the end of the tunnel is still showing no light, the economics are in disarray, we have seen these periods seven times in the last 150 years and all were bad, blah, blah blah. The reality is that the market liquidation of all positions over the last six months that held any leverage, risk, or that were marked to market values, has created a tsunami of selling that may have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
Nobody wants to try to pick the bottom of anything, let alone a market, and as such the deadly headlines have to be tempered with the technical charts if we are to get a real semblance for market sentiment right now. Over the last week there has been a slowdown in currency reactions to the daily noise, and a dramatic reduction to the daily Average Trading Range of all of the major pairs. Volume reductions confirm that the speculative interest may have had its fill of currency selling against the dollar, and that was confirmed by the speculative bounce that broke the back of $750 on gold on Thursday/Friday.
Whatever the personal perspective, whatever the media's thoughts on the impending doom, and whatever the headlines say, the charts are showing something that needs attention paid to it. Friday's 'Tim Geithner Rally' may just be the spark that sets an ABC long structure in place on equities, it may not be the bottom, who knows where that will actually be, but it does look as though a relief bounce is coming.