No Anxiety for Tech, Biotech

The action in this shortened trading week suggests market participants worked out their forecasts for the full year 2007, concluding it will be good for stocks. It seems investors and strategists can't find a reason not to be bullish, but they know the rally can't last forever.

Sentiment readings on the market are mixed. Notoriously the last to know, individual investors are suddenly getting bullish after never really getting upbeat amid the Dow's run to record highs in November and December. The American Association of Individual Investors shows a reading of 49.14% bullish as of Thursday, its highest since the week ending Nov. 9. On the other hand, MarketVane's Bullish Consensus shows that S&P 500 futures traders are 69% bullish -- the measure's first reading below 70 since September.

John Roque, the senior technial analyst at Natexis Bleichroeder, summed up many strategists' feelings Thursday: "You might be eager to place us in the bullish camp given that we're sending out a report detailing seven big bases with upside potential," writes Roque. "Rather, we're just as eager to talk to you about shorts. But we'd like to do that in person."

Roque writes that Mattel(MAT Quote), H.J. Heinz(HNZ Quote), SunTrust Banks(STI Quote), Abbott Laboratories(ABT Quote), General Electric(GE Quote), Weyerhaeuser(WY Quote), and Verizon(VZ Quote) all have established strong four- to eight-year bases, or tight ranges. Each has begun to relatively outperform the S&P 500 within the past year, and that means they could be ready to break out of said ranges.