I like to consider myself a realist at the core. It's a bit of a character oddity, considering I primarily trade short-term setups where realism can be as chic as it was to an impressionist in the 1870's.
Buy high sell higher.
Don't study the details - appreciate the mood. It has been a staple entree on the market's menu over the past nine quarters. Like good cuisine, momentum has different flavors and personalities. Sometimes its recapturing - think the back half of 2009. Other times its expansionary - think Netflix and Apple over the last eight years.
And then there is the air pockets in between.
They always seem to feel the longest - like that thermodynamics class you had as a freshman which suffice to say weeded the crowd a bit. Those that stuck around were rewarded, those that left - well found themselves in less technical fields - like sociology.
The markets currently find themselves squarely situated in an air pocket between courses. Whether we are served another round of momentum a la carte hinges on the relative performance in the currency markets, which sits at the achilles heel of the system - the politicians both here and abroad.
Here is a reprint of the Steve Leuthold video from a while back in which he sagely alludes (back half of the video) to our present predicament from the captain's chair in early March 2009. The missing variable of course is the flip side of the coin - Europe.