The market is slightly higher in early trading. For the first morning in awhile, there were no headlines out of Greece about progress or delays in its debt settlement talks.

Asian markets were higher overnight, led by China after the govt. raised gasoline prices and also provided support to the real estate market by instructing lenders to accommodate first time homebuyers.

Many investors have rejected emerging markets, and I can't say I blame them. As a group, emerging markets really went sour in 2011, dropping nearly 19% and trailing the S&P 500's 2% gain by about 21%. Still, I urge those who feel these markets are nothing but bad news to reconsider. After returning 76% in 2009 and 19% in 2010, they were due for a pullback. But now, emerging markets have resumed their upward march, rising more than 14% so far this year, compared with about a 6% gain for the S&P 500.

Declining Volume on Rallies is Troubling by Market Trend Forecast

Following some healthy basing action in the previous week, we saw stocks head higher once again last week, continuing the 7-week uptrends.

The NAZ tagged 11-year highs, while the other indexes approached key levels from 2011. All news is good news these days, and it seems stocks may never decline again. Careful though – be sure to manage risk accordingly on new positions after a run of this magnitude. Could be that the first pullback is a good one with so many looking to lock in profits at some point.

Big Wave Trading is currently 100% long in our margin and IRA accounts. The Big Wave Trading market model went into a full buy signal on 1/5/2012 following a partial buy signal on 1/3/2012. Since the full buy signal, multiple stocks have set up and broken out of sound consolidation patterns. The one problem with this rally, however, is that we are not seeing any explosive gains right off the bat. Normally at the start of new uptrends, Big Wave Trading will have a handful of stocks up 20% in just a few days to a couple of weeks. This is not happening this time.