Markets soared today — was that news?

All the pundits and markets cheerleaders were surprised by today's great rally, and started to look for a reason, to rationalize today's market action. Here's a typical news report from today — Markets start September with a bang; Dow up 255

Stocks start month with a big rally after signs of growth in US, Chinese manufacturing

Of course, this kind of rationlization is completely useless. The truth is, the markets internals just created the rally, like it or not, the growth in US and the rest of the world is negative, and it's actually disastrously negative. But markets never reflect economic reality.

Here are quotes from a couple of bloggers posted before today's rally:

• MarketSci — Seasonality map for September
• Trader's Narrative — A peak into September, weakest historical month

According to MarketSci's data, there was a 100% bias to have a rally today, and there's still 50% and 25% for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow — see map below. So it's going to give all the reasons for the bulls to get over-excited, just before going to the slaughter house, probably before month end.

According to Trader's Narrative post, September is actually the only month of the year that has been down more times than not over the last 60 years. Since 1950, no other month has been more negative and all of September’s weakness statistically comes in the last ten calendar days of the month between September 20th and September 30th.

Chart of the Day also has a nice one:

Of course, markets can do whatever they want, but you've been warned. As far as I'm concerned, I still see too much bullishness to change my opinion about where the markets are headed and I see this as a good entry for shorts, and will wait until I'm back from holidays to think about a course of action.