"As best as we can tell, the apparent market psychology of the long-only's is, 'I can't afford to miss an upmove and trail benchmarks and peers, but if the market goes down and we lose money, so will everyone else, so that's okay.' ''  That was Friday's message to clients from Rick Bensignor, chief market strategist at Dahlman Rose in New York, as reported in CNBC's NetNet. 

With the market dismissing disastrous news out of Japan and the debt fears in Portgual and elsewhere in the European Union, there seems little option to do anything but buy.  "We’re impressed by how quickly we’ve shaken off what looked like some catastrophic events," said Ryan Detrick, senior analyst at Schaeffer’s Investment Research.  "Just like that, the bulls are back in charge."

    Strategists Baffled, Worried About Consequences.   This, then, is the dilemma in investing, where normally safety-inclined portfolio managers are now more worried about missing the rallies.  And caution seems a hard ticket to sell when plain-vanilla savings are yielding nothing and stocks and commodities just keep climbing higher.  NetNet attributes the trend directly to the Fed rate policy, that does nothing to encourage saving and everything to push people towards the Wall Street casino. 

Money markets continue to hemorrhage cash, with holdings down to $2.732 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute. That's the lowest number since August 2007 - 2 months before the Dow and S&P 500 hit their historical highs - and it's fallen 4 weeks in a row.   

"If they keep interest rates too low and are artificially low too long, investors will then be forced to take risks that they don’t want to take in order for them to generate returns.  This is where I think there should be a little concern."  --  Tim Courtney, CIO at Burns Advisory Group.

But not too much concern, Courtney added, even though he thinks a 15% market pullback could be in the offing.  "When you look at the broad asset classes that are out there—stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities—and compare the prices of those asset classes to each other, stocks by far and away come out as the winner,” he said. "That’s the asset class that has the most potential for growth and is currently the cheapest price.”

For the complete story, go to:   [CNBC's NetNet, 3/25]