Today in the market, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 : The optimism is building on Wall Street. Financial stocks led Wall Street sharply higher Wednesday on investor hopes the Obama administration will create banks to absorb the bad assets weighing down the financial system. The Standard & Poor's 500 index, a benchmark for the overall stock market, completed its first four-day rally since late November. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 201 points. Financial stocks surged on the notion that the government could take soured debt like defaulting mortgages off the hands of banks and place them in a so-called bad bank to hold toxic assets. Investors have been worrying that banks won't be able to resume more normal levels of lending without somehow dumping or walling off the bad debt that is corroding their balance sheets. And the economy can't recover from a 14-month-old recession without improvements in lending and consumer confidence (headline & commentary courtesy of Yahoo Finance) ETF/CEF Medium Volatility: BBH - Biotech Holders ETF/CEF High Volatility : BDT - BlackRock Strategic Dividend Achievers Trust EFV - iShares MSCI Value EWM - Malaysia iShares EWP - Spain iShares EWQ - France iShares EWW - Mexico iShares EZU - EMU Index iShares FEU - streetTRACKS Dow Jones STOXX 50 Fund FEZ - streetTRACKS Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50 Fund FXI - iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 GXC - SPDR S&P China ETF HYG - iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond Fund IEV - Europe 350 iShares IOO - S&P Glbl 100 iShares XLY - Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF/CEF Discussion: Well here we go again with another good gain in stocks today. Quite puzzling is that RSI picked so many foreign funds. Maybe there is something to this, I’m not sure. As the charts demonstrate,  these funds are in the category of falling knives, so please use reasonable care. Today I added EFA and KCE to my portfolio. These two have been recent RSI picks. We shall see what transpires. Treasury Bonds sold off today and some of my bond fund holdings are approaching sell levels. I’m keeping a close eye on them. Catch you tomorrow.