GET YOUR FACTS FIRST

GET YOUR FACTS HERE

Back in the day when we used to fool around with some serious medicine, a prominent colleague with an Ivy League pedigree would begin nearly every one of his responses with: "My bias is....."

Based on today's jobs report the market looks more and more bipolar with part of it egged on by growing confidence in the recovery and the other laden with fear about the likelihood of rising interest rates.

New highs in the indexes are becoming almost daily happenings but overall on the year these markers aren't up much.

Call it yin and yang, economic push-pull, financial schizophrenia or whatever you like. But don't it call boring. It's a decent bet something's on the brink. Honeymoons and Goldilocks markets don't last. If they did it would be a fundamental violation of human nature.

Like central banks, we humans usually find a way to screw things up. It kind of comes with the territory. Some might define this skill as bias. Most of the action before long three-day holidays is protective and tame.

The big July holiday is a doorstop between the first half and the last. A brief respite period to either cheer for more of the same or pray for change, depending on one's bias. Will this turn into a picker's market or one just over-inflated looking for a way station to deflate?

As always your guess is about as good as the next guru's. Just try to keep your bias reasonable, if such a thing exists. As Mark Twain once put it: "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."