Stock Market--Party's Over

We are in investment advice territory, so take my comments with a grain of salt. I am not a Financial Analyst, I don't even play one on TV. This site should not be your sole fiscal advisor. But I do have eyes, common sense, and a website. I am not sure what that entitles me to, but I'll put my opinion out there on this topic:

I believe it is time to take the money out of the Stock Market, and sit on the sidelines for a few weeks.

Each weekend, I go running with one of my bosses from work. He is in good shape. I'm not in great shape. And every week, after about a half mile, he asks me "so...what do you think of the market?" Every week, I tell him (in gasping, wheezing tones) "I think it's going lower". Every week, I have to explain why last week I was wrong. Which, if you have ever had to explain being wrong, while simultaneously out of breath, is twice as frustrating.

But I think what I have been seeing(or more precisely, NOT seeing)in the market, is now becoming obvious to the rest of the investing punditry--notably, that there is NOTHING to support this recent stock market run up.

I keep telling my boss, "I will believe in the market run up when the unemployment claims start to drop." But we haven't seen that. In fact, just today, the new jobless claims numbers came out at 631,000. This had been as high as 700,000, but in good times, this number is in the 150,000 range. So should I be excited, and ready to pile back into the market because new jobless claims have fallen all the way down to 4+ TIMES the usual rate? This is hardly encouraging, especially since we would have hoped to see a levelling off in the recession indicators. I don't see how these unemployment figures lead us to believe that things are better.

And all of the "green shoots" of prosperity that the administration is pointing to--things like consumer sentiment, right-track polling, optimism about the economy opinions, are not substantive in their nature, to show a true recovery is on the way.

The dollar is weaker. Manufacturing is bleeding. Car companies are shedding jobs. Housing is at best, a mixed bag. Unemployment stinks. Banks continue to fail. Interest rates are zero. Gas has crept up to over $2.50 a gallon, and rising. Somehow, that $13/week tax cut isn't really getting me much in the way of relief.

What part of this scenario is giving investors that all important sign that things are 35% better than they were in March?

The answer is, "NOTHING indicates that things are better". The market is heading lower. This rally has been for suckers. If I had any money in the equity market, I would take my gains at this point, and wait a couple of weeks, minimum, to see what happens, before putting another penny in.

But until I see unemployment level off, at somewhere closer to 200,000 new claims, and I start to see productivity, housing sales, longer lines at Yankee Stadium, ANYTHING like that, I think it's only a matter of time before the people, drunk on the recent rally profits, start to sober up and say, "hey, man...party's over".