At first glance, it looks like the rebound effort following last week’s marketwide drubbing has already failed. The buying effort slowed to a crawl on Wednesday, and today’s – Thursday’s – trading is decidedly bearish. We’re not yet back to last week’s lows, but it appears we’re pointed in that direction again.

Before jumping to any conclusions though, know that there are some things traders are either doing or not doing that they arguably should be doing. Investors aren’t anywhere near as afraid as they should be… at least on some fronts.

On other fronts, they are.

It matters, if only because the fear-driven and greed-driven market may be dropping deceptive hints. Indeed, the overarching, aggregate hint may be one of net-nothingness. In other words,  it’s entirely possible the market is just going to drift sideways for a while, until traders figure out what’s going on and then decide what’s next.

Reality

In a perfect world, the market trend at any given time would make sense. Stocks would more or less reflect past and plausible results, with tiny adjustments being made every day as new information is processed.

We don’t live – or trade – in that perfect world though. We trade in a world where hysteria and headlines push the market around. Sometimes, like now, that hysteria-driven dynamic can completely take charge and run roughshod over the bulls or the bears.

That’s not entirely a bad thing for savvy traders that know how to spot reversals…. not that it’s hard to do.  Fear and greed tend to be at their most frenzied right around bottoms and tops, respectively. Find the tools that indicate fear and greed, and you’ve found a great way to get in and out of the market quite effectively.

Problem: Right now, all the different tools we’d normally use to measure fear and greed are telling us different stories. It’s an indication that traders aren’t really sure of what lies ahead, even if they’re trading as if they do.