When

Alan Greenspan

talks, the market listens.

Greenspan gave a speech on Monday, and the market didn't react, it just listened. Now that's news.

A few weeks ago, when Greenspan carried the same message during his

Humphrey-Hawkins

testimony, the market slid. On Monday, his message hadn't changed, and yet the market just sat still and listened. It's not the news that's important; it's the market's reaction to the news. For some reason yesterday, the market didn't seem to care.

For now, that's good news.

Oh sure, the market was mixed on Monday, with the

Dow Jones Industrial Average

down and advance/decline line negative while the

S&P 500

and

Nasdaq

powered ahead. Monday's mixed market brought back memories from a few short months ago when tech was hot and everything else was not. A hot technology market is just what this market does not need. The statistics turn lousy when technology reigns; it's just too narrow. We need good A/D lines and increasing new highs to keep the market going; with tech the only strong sector, we will not get those statistics in gear.

However, the market has still not reached its maximum overbought level, and we should continue to give it the benefit of the doubt. This tells us that there is still some upside momentum left in the market.

In addition to that, the number of stocks making new highs increased yesterday, albeit by a meager two issues. But, at least for now, it's still increasing, not shrinking. And when I calculate the new highs minus new lows on a 10-day moving average to give us a general market direction and trend; that points upward. Add to this the

McClellan Summation Index

curling upward, and we've got a market which should carry further.

Take a look at the chart of the

New York Financial Index

, which consists of all financial-related stocks on the

New York Stock Exchange

, and see how a move through 546 would help power this average higher. The first trip up to 546 in early January was met with the resistance left over from all that trading in the first half of 1998. The correction we've just had is perfectly normal action. A move through this level would not only reassert the financials on the upside but would help to expand the number of stocks at new highs, as so many are churning just below their old highs.

In addition to the financial stocks, there is a new positive group emerging in my pile of charts: the consumer-products stocks. If we take

Colgate

(CL) - Get Report

as an example and view a one-year chart on a daily basis, you might see what's interesting here. There was a high made last July (along with nearly everything else!), followed by a deep correction in the August/September decline, followed by a rally back to the old highs near 95. Then the stock corrected again, rallied back to its old highs one more time, only to fail up there. However, this time the stock corrected with huge volume, which says "clean out" to me, and has rallied. First the rally went to 89 and backed off, but it held at a higher high.

Higher highs are important, especially when the DJIA and the S&P came back down to their previous lows during the same time frame. Colgate didn't participate in the recent whack in the market. Now it's rallied last week on increasing volume. A move through 95 ought to carry this stock right out of this eight-month correction and to a target of 120.

Procter & Gamble

(PG) - Get Report

looks similar. And when I opened the chart book to have a look at the longer-term charts of these two stocks,

Gillette

(G) - Get Report

practically jumped off the page as another stock that could get going on the upside.

Another good chart, though not in the consumer-products group, is

Telmex

(TMX)

. I wish I had a pile full of charts that looked like this one. Since mid-1997 (yes, almost two years ago!), this stock has traded between (approximately) 55 and 35. In the past few days, it has pushed itself through to new highs, making this look like one big sideways correction. An easily calculated target would be around 75.

My pile of charts continues to show the financials on the positive side. In the DJIA,

American Express

(AXP) - Get Report

is buyable into this dip, and

Citigroup

(C) - Get Report

is still good.

J.P. Morgan

(JPM) - Get Report

needs to get through 117 after this rest. Outside the Dow,

BankAmerica

(BAC) - Get Report

is still a good chart, and so is

Fannie Mae

(FNM)

.

Merrill Lynch

(MER)

in the brokers is still a favorite of mine.

In the tech world,

Motorola

(MOT)

is still the best big base in the pile.

Sun Micro

(SUNW) - Get Report

is also a good-looking chart, but certainly not a base like Motorola.

Nike

(NKE) - Get Report

continues to appear on the positive side, as does

Limited

(LTD)

in the retailing group.

On the negative side,

Sara Lee

(SLE)

is looking like a failure here at 27.

I expect more upside action in the market over the next week or two. If this rally is going to pick up some steam and get through 10,000, then it needs those indicators to keep pointing up and show continued improvement.

Without continued improvement in the indicators, the market will get too tired too fast. Hey, maybe we need Greenspan to say something nice about stocks...

Helene Meisler, based in Singapore, writes a technical analysis column on the U.S. equity markets Tuesdays and Fridays and updates her key charts daily. At the time of publication, she was long Nike, though positions may change at any time. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Meisler trained at several Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs and Cowen, and has worked with the equity trading department at Cargill.