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Tuesday Rebound - is it for real?

The markets looked great today. All the really beaten down sectors popped including financials and tech. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the damage over the last week or so has been so great that today's rally didn't even move the needle in terms of the charts. Indeed, the TradeRadar signals are still firmly bearish on the indexes and sectors that I track here.

As we all know, markets don't go straight up and they don't go straight down. Expect more volatility for the near term and don't be surprised if we see another low later this week. After all, today's economic news was anything but supportive. Q4 productivity was lowered to 1.6%, below the consensus of 1.7%, from a previous read of 3.0%. Unit labor costs were more than double economists' forecasts with a rise of 6.6%. With productivity improving an anemic 1.6%, margin pressure is beginning to develop. This is not the foundation for a rising market.

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