Stocks look mixed this morning after another record close for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI), S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Transportation averages (IYT) last night. There's a lot of collateral noise out there involving the Russian ruble collapsing, gold prices and yen trades but the simplest explanation for continued strength is a lack of good reasons to sell.
Related: Markets have 5-10% left to run this year: Hirsch
The bond market is closed today so this is a good chance to talk about non-rigorous things like sentiment and market timing. The middle of November is a happy little pocket of the year for stocks. There isn't much more to say in terms of earnings, elections are behind us and after Thanksgiving the year is pretty much over. That means for fund managers trailing the market, and this year that's almost everyone except Bill Ackman and apparently Stevie Cohen, you're going to take risks now or possibly not at all.
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Labor Day to Thanksgiving marks the longest stretch of open trading days for stocks of the year. People get a little nuts. Stocks start trading in exaggerated bursts like we've seen with Alibaba (BABA) and Apple (AAPL) where everyone knew the story already but the stocks ramped higher anyway. Both companies are crushing but that's hardly news. The stocks are higher because no one is going to get fired owning either and that's pretty reassuring.
More prosaically we've got transports at record highs, up something crazy like 18% from intraday lows on October 13th. Financials are on a tear but no where near record highs. That's good. It wouldn't be rational to be led by financial stocks but we want them to participate.
Related: The stock market won the Midterm: Macke
Basically we have a Turkey Shoot rally set-up named in honor of our exquisitely not-bright national meal bird. Like everything about Thanksgiving, you don't have to like it but you have to respect the basic idea.
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