The bulls had their way again last week - the second in a row, and the sixth of the last seven. It was a struggle though, with the only meaningful progress being made with Wednesday’s jump; even solid earnings news from Google couldn’t light a real fire.

So are the bulls finally at the end of the road, even if only temporarily? That’s the million dollar question, which we attack below. We’ll just preface our take with this…. what “is” and what “should be” can be two different things for quite some time.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the market continued to defy the odds last week and tack on another gain. For the S&P 500, that 11.04 point jump meant a 0.95% advance. The gain itself is a little misleading, however, for a couple of reasons.

First, though a gain is a gain is a gain, the momentum was fading to close out the week; even a big jump from GOOG was barely enough to keep the SPX in the black on Friday (and it’s still difficult to weed out expiration day’s effects versus the market’s organic movement).

The second problem? Though the SPX drifted upward as the week wore on, the market’s bearish depth (volume) really kicked into high gear later in the week, while the bullish depth faded. In neither case could it be said the depth trend had ‘turned’, but it’s getting close. Like we mentioned above, the undertow and the overt trend are starting to diverge, which isn’t bullish in this case.

As before though, until the uptrend clearly snaps - with a move under the 20-day average line currently at 1150 - it’s difficult to fight the tape. Be nimble here.

S&P 500

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