Consumer confidence and investor confidence are key indicators to watch. Both have been increasing for the past few months. This trend can cause positive feed-back loop cycle that is beneficial to the markets. No wonder, the markets have been increasing for the past few months. There are no strong reasons why this bullish mode cannot continue. And more importantly, even after multi-months increase, the level of consumer confidence is still low and has plenty of upside. The recovery surely will not be a smooth ride, but it is clearly in-progress.

Do you want to bet against US consumers and US economy in the long-term? US consumers, whether we like it or not, really love to shop. Yes, we can potentially have alarming 15% unemployment rate; yes we still have awfully large mortgage crisis, increasing foreclosures, and sinking home prices (note: the decline started to slow down per last report); yes, we will have credit card problems; yes, commercial loans will likely to blow-up. However, consider these:

- All these serious problems do not affect all American people and businesses. After all, 85% of American people are still employed; which means majority of American people are still able to purchase products and services;

- Majority of published corporate earnings have been better than analysts' projected earnings.

- How about GM bankruptcy? GM will go bankrupt all right, no surprise here; however, will it cause US economy to collapse? We don't think so. GM stock price (and market value) is now a very very small percentage of Dow Jones Industrial Average 30 Index.US economy nowadays is NOT driven by auto manufacturing business.

- Have we mentioned that many hedge fund managers caught short for the past few months have no choice but to buy back their losing short positions if the markets continue to go up steadily?

No one will be able to predict with 100% accuracy on when the US economy will be fully back to normal, whether or not we have already reached the bottom in March 2009, and whether or not future write-offs and pessimism will sink the markets badly like in what happened in October 2008 and March 2009. People with ability to hear and read financial news and data, certainly know there are many bad data and bearish outlooks out there. There is no secret bad information anymore. Commercial loans are bad. Credit card loans are bad. Home prices continue to go down, etc. Now, If all know what all need to know about good and bad economic data & outlooks and markets have clearly ignored the bad news, then the rules of the game are likely changing or have changed. The US markets and global markets have been proven to be extremely resilient for the past few months despite all the bad news and future dire projections published by various respected people and institutions. Hence, we are cautiously more bullish on both global markets and US markets.

"If you wait for the robins, the spring will be over." ~ Warren Buffett