While we all recognize by now that stocks can dive or soar unpredictably on any given day, it looks like bears are still pinned to the ropes at the moment. And although we talk about the Plunge Protection Team and DaBoyz keeping the game rigged in favor of bulls, it is bears themselves who have been providing virtually all of the buying power lately. If you are short, you need only plumb your own thoughts and emotions to figure out what panic-prone bears are going to do next.

In a batten-the-hatches commentary last week, I’d allowed for three weeks’ worth of distribution before stocks resume January’s hellacious plunge. A week later, however, I’m growing impatient with the stock market’s seeming inability to sell off hard enough to actually scare investors.  Indeed, when we read that Google has now joined the very large group of companies who can find no better use for surplus cash than to repurchase their own shares, the unthinkable begins to insinuate itself on our brains — i.e., that a true bear market has become impossible.  But, no, it’s really not different this time, even if the exact timing of the avalanche we all know is coming is impossible to predict. Bear market follows bull market as night follows day. In that regard, dusk almost surely has fallen on Wall Street.