Dow 15,000 and all that

Does the Dow have the oomph, as it were, to punch through 15,000, and close the day there?  It certainly feels like it.

The recent trend is up, to 13,000  from 12,000 this April and 10,000 last July.  But sooner or later -- like right around here -- the Dow keeps bumping into that 14,000 ceiling it reached in the halcyon days of 2008.

This much is certain:  I should have written a book with one of those titles.  They all seem to become best-sellers.  I mean, Dow 15,000.  Or Dow 150,000.  Maybe even, if my friend Martin Hutchinson of the Prudent Bear (a former UPI colleague) has it right, Dow 1,500 Again.

How should one read these trends?  Cherchez le Price.  There are always wiggles, there are always news shocks, from the Japanese tsunami to Arnold Schwarzeneggar's second cousin's maid's assistant.

But there's one thing that sums up all these forces and wisdom and fear and greed and reflection in a single, incontrovertible, wonderfully mathematical data point:  Price.

If the Dow can keep challenging 14,000, 15,000, great.  If it can break through and close above, greater still.  If it can break through with some real decisiveness, victory.  Buy high, sell higher.

The same on the downside.  There seemed to be a lot of support at 8,000.   Dow 1,500 is going to require that we crash through that gate, and 5,000, to be realized.

So what good does all this do?  After all, if we're in a range, it's hard to know whether to invest for a Bull or Bear Market.  Well, that's right.  If we're in a range, we're not in a Bull or Bear Market.

Meantime, you look for great companies that are riding strong social or economic trends.  Well-managed firms.  Companies that have some price momentum individually, even if the broader market doesn't.

"You don't have to have a position on everything," as Charles Brunie once, wisely, put it, which means you don't have to have a position on the indexes.  Buy good, sell gooder.