Spoilsports for continuing market rally?

The DOW Jones was marginally down by 16 points. The S&P 500 ended up marginally.

The expiry of a lot of options contracts was supposed to cause volatility and even an upward spike to the indices. But looks like that did not materialize

The cause of the flat note to the week ending was attributed to falling crude oil prices by the financial media. Strange! since last week rising trend in Oil prices was feared to pre-empt any slow recovery

Some media pundits saw encouraging signs for a global economic recovery in US data, which only seems to confirm that media does not have a clue what it is talking about

These so-called encouraging signs were jobless claims data, philly Fed survey and US factory data. At this point it is difficult to comment on these without more analysis

But a look at this week's market points to a flagging rally. While a rise cannot be ruled out, there is hardly anything changing at the ground-level to support market enthusiasm for a US recovery

The absence of any significant news from now to the middle of next month may help to keep the US market range-bound, we can expect the following red flags in the coming months

• Negative GDP growth in the 2nd quarter as against a marginally postive one forecast by the Wall Street bulls
• Poor 2nd quarter results from the DJIA and SP 500 bellweathers which may push the index EPS further down
• Economic deterioration in the Eurozone with more trouble in UK & Irealand
• More bankruptcies from the impending commercial real estate decline/crash( Extended Stay has entered Chapter 11)
• Worsening conditions in the Consumer-disretionary sector (Eddie Baeur has filed for bankruptcy)

Trade cautiously the rest of this month