Actually, markets these days always start to discount the news before the news is publicly known. Case in point is the Bernanke confirmation and the Greece debacle. The Jan sell off was a convenient little reminder to Congress not to muck with things and confirm Bernanke. Also, I’m sure the Greece situation was known by large players long before it was publicly revealed. That’s why that announcement pretty much marked the bottom of this move.

Interesting data, though it seems that given your methods, the minor ups and downs might have consider room for errors (selection bias, subjectivity etc.) and it would be easier to read if you presented the S&P chart lined up on the same chart. Also it would really be good to show the data from 2008 too, or even longer into the past. I’m thinking this year has been unusual and further back data might help see whether this indicator reflects that.

I’m tempted to ask whether you included http://www.philstockworld.com in your data collection, but won’t. However, I’ll note (in support of a certain subjectivity) Phil’s articles are often a mix of bearish and bullish – as in, “the fundamentals are terrible but the market’s going up and hitting our levels, which means buy, but it’s hard to.”

Ilene

Working from memory, it looks like even the interim “peaks” ~7/09 & ~9/09 correlate to mini-corrections. I see why you wouldn’t publish which blogs but how about the total number?