In pre-republican France, upon the passing of a sitting monarch the Duc d'Uzès would proclaim “The King is dead. Long live the King!”

The idea, of course, was that a new king was rising up to take the place of the old. The Crown as an institution was alive and well; it was just that the head under it had changed.

As of late we have heard a lot about how sentiment was too bearish and that this justified the market rally.

While we no doubt got a rally, we have to question the idea that sentiment is overdone to the downside. In the world of sentiment indicators there are more then a few ways to look at things. You can look at polls like Investors Intelligence or the AAII numbers, you can look at anecdotal indicators like covers at the magazine rack or listening to your shoeshine boy, and finally you can look at market derived indicators.

Once upon a time, market volume, in combination with price, was a useful indicator. Or make that indicators (plural), including Rate of Change, Volume Oscillator, On Balance Volume, Price and Volume Trend, Accumulation Distribution, Chaikin Oscillator, Money Flow Indicator, etc.

Even so, S&P 500 volume has been falling since early May with no sign yet of a post-summer seasonal increase. Of course, we're still in the holiday shortened week following Labor Day. But look at the 2009 volume pattern on the chart. Where was the volume to confirm the market advance after a choppy October?