Market Shrugging Off More Bad News In Early Trading

Last night, bailout talks for the automakers broke down when the Senate voted it down. Also, there was a huge fraud uncovered involving Madoff Securities, which looks like $17 billion of investors' funds has vanished.

The news hit the Asian markets hard, with Japan and Hong Kong falling more than -5% overnight. The futures on our markets were also deeply in the red. When our markets opened this morning, the indexes were down more than -2.5% each.

But then the White House and Treasury said they would step in to prevent the automakers from failing. This helped put a floor under stocks, and they have continued to crawl their way back. As of this post, the Nasdaq, mid-cap, and small-cap indexes are all back in positive territory. You can't make this stuff up.

Tech stocks are leading the way (GOOG, AAPL, RIMM, BIDU, AMZN, etc), followed by housing stocks and biotechs. Energy stocks are lagging after oil dropped over $3 to near $44.50 after yesterday's sharp bounce.

It is still very early in the day, but it is looking promising that this session could be characterized as another example of the market reacting positively to negative news. This is the change in character I have commented on, and bodes well for the market breaking out of its recent trading range.

A few of the financials are starting to firm up, and if those stocks can stay green today, we could have a good day. Stay tuned.

long AAPL, GOOG, RIMM