If there is one thing that has been consistent lately it is inconsistency.  The reasons we hear for the market’s movement one day are the exact opposite of the reasons we heard the day before.

Friday an article in the WSJ by David Weidner reasoned that the movement in 5 stocks; C, BAC, AIG, FNM and FRE were responsible for the market’s latest move up.  Saturday, Michael Santoli added some perspective to this claim by asking “how a handful of stocks with a combined market value near $200BN could ‘drive’ a stock market worth more than $10TN”.

A glance at the number of Weekly New Highs and Lows in Barron’s shows 247 vs. 2 on the NYSE, 46 vs. 4 on the AMEX and 183 vs. 16 on NASDAQ.  Interesting that it is the new lows that are the number closer to a handful for each of the exchanges mentioned.

Also at odds are the recent Investor Intelligence numbers of 51% bullish vs. 19% bearish with the current hoard of $3.58TN of cash on the sidelines.  It is worth 34% of the stock market’s capitalization which dwarfs the 19% number seen at the 2007 market peak according to Carmine Grigoli, chief investment strategist at Mizuho Securities.

The inconsistencies do not stop there however.  Last Wednesday the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, an independent research institute, said that world trade volumes increased by 2.5% in June, the single biggest monthly increase since July of 2008.  At the same time, Art Wong, a spokesperson for the Port of Long Beach, which when combined with the Port of Los Angeles, is the busiest port complex in the U.S. said that July’s YoY 18.6% drop in container imports is a “really weak” number.

The strength, it appears, came mostly from Latin America with exports rising 14.3% and imports up 11.9%.  The exports were mostly commodities going to China which raises the question of whether that will continue as that country’s stimulus spending begins to slow.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI) and Union Pacific Corp.