Bulls put up a valiant offensive in the last 20 minutes of trading on Tuesday to push the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJX) back above the 10,000 level as the month of August came to a close. For the last six days of August, bears either succeeded or gamely tried to penetrate this psychologically important level intraday only to be repelled by the bulls.

Last week provided the start of another leg down in what has been an unpredictable stock market, and the market now appears to be in the midst of forming another bear flag. Since rolling over and selling off strongly in late April, the market has demonstrated all sorts of conflicting formations that have confounded trend traders and investors.

As I pointed out back in June, cash on hand among S&P 500 companies has been at record levels, and up 25% over the same time last year. One would presume that such cash levels would eventually be used for share buybacks, M&A, or dividend increases – all of which would impact the market favorably.

The market found pleasure in manure today. When Australian miner BHP Billiton (BHP) proposed to acquire Canadian fertilizer maker Potash (POT), the market saw this as an opportunity to soar. Perhaps traders took it as a sign that corporate cash is ready to be deployed…or perhaps it was simply a low-volume oversold bounce on the flimsiest of catalysts.

Last month, I posted that net insider trading transactions had turned positive for the first time since May. Updating this for the week ending November 27, it appears that optimistic insiders again outnumber pessimistic ones.

Sabrient's research team posts a wide variety of useful data for internal reference, and much of it is used within our quantitative models and client deliverables. One of the things that we track is Net Insider Transactions.