Reasons to think that the market will grind higher into early 2012

Barry Ritholtz and Jeff Saut sort of agree that the reasons for going up, v down, in next month or three (assuming Europe does not self-destruct) are:

1. underinvested portfolio managers playing “catch up” (read: performance anxiety)
2. the upside seasonal bias
3. low stock valuations [Vitus - Rosenberg disagrees]
4. improving economic trends
5. still depressed sentiment readings
6. the knowledge that we have now entered the best performing six months of the year for stocks