The Murky Market: Searching for a Bottom

Companies complain about a lack of visibility. They should try investing in this market.

The Murky Market: Searching for a Bottom

What Fed Rate Cuts Have Meant for the Markets

Sentimental Journey: Indicators Give Mixed Messages

Technical Difficulties: Technical Analysts Use Different Barometers, Find Different Results

Bull vs. Bear: A Daily Interview Face-Off

The 'Other Market:' Some Tech Stocks May Not Have Seen the Floor Yet

Is It Time to Put 'Play Money' to Work?

If Now, Then How: The Right Way to Get Back In

One True Thing: Money Market Funds

Even after a decent start this week, the inability to see a clear path has addled investors. March 2000 and Nasdaq 5000 seem light years away. In the interval, we have watched the Nasdaq Composite plunge 58% and the broader S&P 500 skid about 19%, a stone's throw from Bearville.

It's murky out there. We've seen recent whiffs of a possibly stabilizing economy, but the chatter about recession is still incessant. Making matters muddier is that the great market leadership group of the late 1990s, high-technology companies, can hardly see five feet in front of them when it comes to growth forecasts.

Sure, tech continues to confound, but a few market watchers argue that the broader market may be finished heading south.

"The most practical evidence indicates that most major indices bottomed last year," says Christine Callies, chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch. "The market has already turned. The S&P 500 may have done that in the last few days."

The recent -- albeit still short-lived -- market snapback has some bulls getting excited. But a two-day trend is tough to bank on in these strange times. For every Christine Callies, another market pundit will just as decisively argue the bear side of the equation.

How do you make sense of this market? TheStreet.com offers some guidance on how to examine the market in today's special package, The Murky Market: Searching for the Bottom. In a series of articles, TSC staffers round up the usual suspects for analysis -- Wall Street equity researchers, technical indicators, sentiment gauges, the historical effect of rate cuts and more -- and dig deeper into what they say about the market's direction.

The question "Should you buy now?" yields no easy answers.

Sure, the oft-invoked mantra these days says that the market rises about 20% on average in the 12 months after the Fed starts cutting rates. But as Eric Gillin reports, Fed cuts aren't always an automatic prelude to revival.

Likewise, people are reading the sentiment tea leaves for signposts of that much-desired contrarian nirvana: capitulation. But K.C. Swanson's look at the troika of sentiment "focus groups" -- investors, consumers and corporations -- turns seeming contradictions.

And for those Street watchers tired of all the murkiness, Catherine Valenti rounds out the package with a look at the one place that offers crystal-clear certainty these days to a growing legion of investors: money market funds.

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