Wall Street has struggled to beat the key resistance point that could put the nail into the bear market’s coffin with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 ending in negative territory — but it was a close run thing. In fact, the Nasdaq kept flying the bulls’ flag by finishing up. The overall result was spectacular considering Chrysler went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy!

Remember 875 is a critical number the bulls would love to see smashed, but it didn’t happen and it means the market is vulnerable to a downside test.

To resist a big fall with the additional threat of swine flu is a big effort and underlines the fact that there are a lot more investors now who believe that shares are the way to go compared to earlier this year. That said, we still have some testing moments ahead such as the full details of the stress tests on 19 US banks.

On the local front, rising home sales is a nice development for the economy and house prices have done a lot better than expected.

APM says average prices for residential homes rose by 0.1% in the March quarter, but were down 3.7% on 12 months to March 31. This is a long way from predictions that house prices would fall by 40%! Some forecasters are way out and wrong.

Peter