All The News Is Good Means Sell

“There’s a bit of cautious optimism heading into the Fed meeting this afternoon.”

– Robert Pavlik (subscription required), Chief Investment Officer, Oaktree Asset Management 

We’ve had quite a nice move in the markets over the last week plus.  Since the bad jobs report on Friday August 7, it appears that investors started looking forward to a rate cut today and markets have rallied powerfully. 

The S&P is up about 2.3% over the last 7 trading days (chart) and the S&P Financials about 3.3% over the same period (chart).

And all the news today has been good. 

Lehman Brother’s (LEH) earnings report has been well received by the market.  Same for Best Buy’s (BBY) (domestic same store sales increases of 1.7%, however, including a 1.6% decline in their core consumer electronics segment, don’t get me too excited (Earnings Release)).

The Producer Price Index (PPI) came in this morning down 1.4% from July.

So the question arises: Can things get any better in the short term? 

Unless the Fed cuts by half a point, I don’t think so – which means now is a good time to do some selling.