Steady as she goes

Everything's looking pretty good in the market lately.

That 8,000 level in the Dow has held strong and it seems like some individual stocks are continuing their upward trajectory.

I'm still staying right where I am.

But that doesn't mean you should.

If you've got the guts (like the ones I lack) then there are probably some really decent values in stocks right now. And if you use dollar-cost averaging, your are probably already taking advantage of some of the lowest stock prices we've seen in a long time.

But I still have too much of a sense that we're not out of the woods yet. And that keeps me on the sidelines.

Happy investing.

Brian.

This rally has legs

Don't want to jinx it, but Wednesday saw another nice close and had the Dow holding steady at around the 8,500 level.

Part of the buoyancy was attribted to a better-than-expected jobs report from payroll administrator Automatic Data Processing.

The report showed that non-farm payrolls fell 491,000 in April, the smallest jobless decline in six months.

There are still many barriers to overcome and some have suggested we're seeing nothing more than a bear market rally, albeit a healthy one.

Buy-and-holders will shrug off any such analysis, but active traders may want to stay alert.

Brian

Nice close today. Is the rally for real?

The market's been trending up, up, up.

Somehow, despite all the lack of confidence about the bank stress tests and the swine flu, the Dow Jones closed up 214 points, to 8,427.

That's quite a bit above the low of 6,594 we saw in March - a nearly 28 percent gain in fact.

I admittedly snoozed while it passed me by.

But is this rally going to stick for awhile?

That's anybody's guess, but some have suggested that if you missed this spike, it may already be getting ready to fizzle.

I guess we'll just have to see.

Brian.