Stocks are hugging the 50-day moving average right now on all three major indicies. The S&P Small-cap 600 & Mid-cap 400, NYSE Composite and Russell 2000 are slightly above the 50-day moving price average.
Bottoming process take time and while I'm as eager as anyone else for the market to move higher, patience in necessary. What I'm seeing right now are some beaten down stocks recovering that were ridiculously oversold (VTR, SNH, STJ, ATG GPC, PLD, and O) to name a few; and some other stocks setting up bases with a few of them attempting to establish themselves as leaders (CWT, DLTR, SJI, CEPH, LHCG, NCIT).
Market breadth (advancers vs. decliners) and (up volume vs. down volume) has been good if not excessive and needs to pull back. However...coming off of market bottoms (whether they are corrections or the end of bear markets), you want to see excessive overbought conditions and see them hold and that's what is happening so-far.
So shorter term, we may have some continued consolidation with a downward bias but longer term, the market is acting like it has during other bottoming processes but they take time to complete.