By Chip Hanlon

The market's tumble today is taking us low enough that it is going to raise the question of whether last Fall's market lows will even hold. At the end of this January 5th article, I mentioned that I was skeptical of the first half rally theory, and I wish I would have come back to it.

Basically, my concern boiled down to this: I don't like it when an oversold asset can't rally, something Carl Swenlin wrote about weeks ago, actually. Take a look at the 3-year Dow chart below:

...and a longer-term look at the same chart makes the "bottoming" of the last 3 months look like a minor pause in a bigger downturn. Hate to say it, hope I'm wrong, but that's how it looks to me.

So, will the lows in the 7500-8000 hold? It would be pretty remarkable if they did.