Speaking before the House Budget Committee in Washington today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the U.S. economy appeared to be gaining in strength.

“Fortunately, over the past few months, indicators of spending, production, and job-market activity have shown some signs of improvement,” Bernanke testified. “The outlook remains uncertain, however, and close monitoring of economic developments will remain necessary.”

With the S&P 500 ending EXACTLY the same as the year before -1257.6 - it signified the boring end to 2011; many of the Indicators regressed to the mean on low Volume, with the VIX at 23. Some relative extremes did include the Inv.Intell. Bulls at 50+%; my records show a 62.9% high in Dec. of '04. AAII Bulls jumped to 40% - must be the champagne! A small number of funds flowed out of equity funds into MMFs, but the ETFs remained almost unchanged month/month.
Here are closing numbers for 2011:

Date>

Still working on the matrix transfer, but the data is updated. 
One of my DITM blog readers kindly shared a DITM-style website, for those interested:
tknight@fullyinformed.com
Additionally, the Gabelli ETF - GDV- also does a nice job, with a 3+% mgmt fee. I also listed 2 trades I did today, ex-dividend tomorrow.

Nothing fancy for the week, just steady gains for indices.  These gains keep in play the rally from October. Market breadth continued to improve alongside index gains. Certain market breadth indicators are at declining resistance dating back to 2010, important tests, because breach these and the rallies will be well placed to continue for the next few weeks (if not months).

Well, I already made that mistake. 1.9% lower. Check out my post from last Tuesday.
But, 1.9% lower really isn’t that far. Especially if you consider all of the bearish indicators that currently reside on  a sentiment and technical basis.
I use very few indicators. I am a strong believer in the linear regression of time and [...]