markets don't move up in a straight line, throughout the past years and decade, all these worries impinge on the market, and you will have intermediate to short term cyclical down moves.
the long term trend is still up, but the question becomes how much of a deviation to the downside will the cyclical move be. The fundamentalists will argue that there are a great deal of forces underlying that can hurt the market. Subprime, CDO's, housing, retail sales, commodity inflation, dollar depreciation.
the problem comes in that there are opposing forces at work, to the markets decrements. Mainly liquidity spiggot has been left on for awhile. When commodity prices start heading down, that will be the warning sign to the market. It means liquidity globally is being tightened. Thats why 80 dollar plus Oil means liquidity is still pretty high, which is favorable to the markets in the very near term.
a lot of this contrary sentiment creates the ability for wealth transfer to occur, for those who are looking at the long term trend. The trend will end when US markets have reached parabolic levels, and we are not quite there yet. It should be sometime after the election is over.
wallstreet has an interest in preserving the positive sentiment in the market. It has affiliations with the current GOP administration, and if you notice, the up moves are pretty swift with a breakout that just occurred. Plus bonuses and commissions will be less with the market enters a bear market period.
competing asset classes have to offer rates of returns against inflation that would warrant a shift away from equities. And bond yields arent there yet.
so the summation of forces have created this trend, and the prudent thing to do would be to pick a point during these fear cycles to get long since probability dictates we move back up and test highs again.
sentiment hasn't really shifted, Friday some key names were still green, while the broader market was hit, with a true sentiment shift, everything is thrown out.
the most conservative thing to do in equities is wait for a 200 or 250 day ma test, and get long. Historically that has worked out.