Even the cloudiest of days can have a ray of sunshine for a few minutes, but that doesn’t mean the bad weather is over. Given that I have been bullish since December 10th and it hasn’t been easy to be optimistic while the stocks have gotten hammered, you might be surprised that I am “raining on today’s parade.” As good as IBM’s numbers were - I am not willing to believe they are the salvation they are being made out to be. So far today, I have heard that IBM’s pre-announcement is a reflection of the bottom in the market or that it reflects the great opportunity brought about by the weak dollar and multinationals with a high percentage of foreign sales or that now is the time to buy technology or that this indicates earnings season (ex-financials) will be good. To me, all of this is way too much extrapolation and we have gone through this before only to get dumped on a few days later. Earnings season has barely begun, let’s see how it plays out. Believing that IBM can single-handedly change market sentiment is stupid. While I am more constructive than I have been for a while, there are many bad things going on. I intend to take each stock on its own merits and I suggest that you do the same.