There were the inevitable reports of “Bargain Hunters” swooping in to the market this morning. I guess it was due to yesterday’s commentary that the market action was a positive. Yep - a positive - because it didn’t finish on the bottom, the smart money came in at the end of the day, and that all-important indicator: the Dow finished above 11,000. I know it was only 2 points above 11,000 but who am I to criticize? By the way, in an earlier post I was on the lookout for fundamental smarties who would suddenly spout the most ridiculous forms of technical analysis and this almost qualified. If only they had thrown in some good techie buzzwords like “wave” and “fibonacci” - but they didn’t.

I am wondering how much worry we need for the wall to be perfect. I have been worried for 2 months - maybe I should measure my wall. Actually, I always found this “wall of worry” talk to be a little goofy so I won’t be building any walls or trying to climb them either. I’ll leave that up to the true believers or should I say “true worriers?”

Bob Pisani of CNBC fame just mentioned the “C” word - capitulation. He was careful to say it wasn’t his word but that he was just repeating what he had heard on the floor. I have been saving my capitulation post for an appropriate time and this isn’t it. As you might expect, I have a different take on this often misdiagnosed phenomenon and I don’t see its relevance right now.

Back to those “Bargain Hunters” that inspired this post … What does a Bargain Hunter look like? I have never figured out how to identify them. I have seen quite a few stock order tickets and never noticed a box that required me to check when I or a client was a “Bargain Hunter.” Do bargain hunter floor traders wear a special jacket to signify their intent? I know what a bargain hunter looks like in my neighborhood. They typically drive around early in the morning with their overflowing pickup trucks and dig through the trash before the professional garbage collectors come. I also can identify bargain hunters during garage sale weekends. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out what a stock bargain hunter looks like and I also have the same vision problems when trying to identify their archenemies - the Profit Takers. Since they bring it up quite frequently, other marketwatchers must be much better at it than me so I am confident I will get some help with this some day. In the meantime, I find it hard to believe that the small decline we have had over the past few weeks has suddenly turned stocks into bargains. Besides, when the Dow was above 11,000 for the past 3 months, I never heard these bargain hunters claiming that the market was overly expensive or fairly valued for that matter.

Oh, and by the way, if Bargain Hunters really did swoop into the market this morning, they didn’t do a very good job.