There are plenty of things looking up now - US employment...

There are plenty of things looking up now - US employment increasing, low interest rates (US), less prospect of really bad writeoffs as the really big banks have already written of about 60% of all subprime exposure - even though only about 5-20% of subprime loans (depending on lender) have actually defaulted at this stage. If default rates plateau they may actually have to announce "write-ups" of previously written down assets. Importantly, very little damage has been done to the "real" economy (ie the economy where real people do real useful things for other people, like make things, provide services, educate the population, heal the sick - as opposed to the "non-real" economy of Wall St financiers where absurd amounts of money are made from not actually doing anything to benefit mankind, but merely by paper shuffling). The pull back away from excessive leverage/debt models has caused quite a bit of pain in the financial (non-real) sector, though note that the "real" economy relies mainly on simple debt - not highly leveraged debt.

IMO a few month run is coming from here - I don't think it will run hard like the last few weeks for long - but likely a pattern of about 1% up a week for the next couple of months to approach previous highs, a bit of a pullback when it hits somewhere between 13700 and 14000, and then onwards and upwards again.