Another rancid Whoopee Cushion breeze set Wall Street’s pennants aflutter yesterday. And forget about profiting from these stupid little rallies, since they are pretty much over before your data software has drawn more than a bar or two on the three-minute chart. Occasionally there are going to be variations. Like yesterday. There was the usual, psychotic frisson on the opening. But this time the rabid badger got second ‘wind’ late in the session, powering a 90-point run-up. But who could have been alert enough to catch it? Nearly 300 minutes of tedium had elapsed in the interim, presumably anesthetizing the brains of any traders whose eyes were glued to the screen.

Like all rallies these days, this one was about 95 percent short-covering, the rest option hedging and arbitrage. There was nary a bull in sight, save Kudlow. But who needs bulls when you’ve got a million bears who have been all too eagerly picking tops since August of 1982?

Re-Loaded for Bear

When the dust settled, Wednesday’s intraday DJIA high of 13916 had gotten within a mere 106 points of the record high recorded in mid-July. A move to new all-time highs seem all but guaranteed at this point, but who knows? Perhaps because expectations of this are by now universal, or close to it, there’s always the possibility Mr. Market will take an in-your-face detour. In fact, we can think of nothing that would vex bulls and bears alike right now so thoroughly as a swoon of 300 to 400 points. That would give shorts an opportunity to reload the gun they have pointed at their own heads while also throwing bulls off the scent.

If this scenario plays out, it would likely be too late to set up a spike on Friday to new all-time highs. Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t rule out the prospect of a 700-point short squeeze, since that’s what it could take to put a top on this 25-year-old bull market. We fully expect that the short squeeze that ends it once and for all will occur on a Friday since that’s the hardest day of the week to go home short ‘ or long. In the meantime, let’s see what kind of deja vu today brings. A 70-point pop in the first minute or so would be about right — followed by six hours of flag-building.