Global Rally Shines on Wall Street

Impressive, but "today's stock market action was the easy stuff," says Marc Pado, chief market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. He notes that the S&P 500 and the Dow rebounded but couldn't narrow in on last week's highs. On March 12, the S&P reached 1410 intraday, and the Dow reached 12,385.

"We have to surpass that to really feel good about the rally," he says, calling Monday's move "insignificant" from a technical perspective.

Other naysayers noted that market internals were tame compared with the rally on March 6, not to mention the intensity of downside action on Feb. 27 and March 2. Of the 2.75 billion shares traded on the Big Board Monday, 84% were to the upside, and advancing stocks led decliners by 24 to 7. In Nasdaq trading, a less impressive 60% of the 1.6 billion shares traded were to the upside, while advancers led by less than a 2-to-1 margin.

Subprime Scenarios

Ultimately, worries that the subprime mortgage market will spill over into the broad economy continue to dog some investors' confidence. And that's where the focus is likely to stay in a week filled with housing-related data and the two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting, at which the central bank is expected to keep the fed funds rate at 5.25%. (The Bank of Japan ends its meeting Tuesday and is also expected to keep its overnight borrowing rate unchanged at 0.5%; resulting weakness in the yen was another factor in Monday's global stock rally.)