The reason could have been apprehension about high badla rates. Alternately, it could have been concerns about the Indo-Pak air skirmish. Whatever it is, the market bounced back on Monday. This column, last Thursday, had pointed out that this bounce had a good chance of happening. The intra day high for the day was 4585, which surpassed Friday's high of 4573. But the right way to view this is as follows: Sensex was at a peak of 4688 on August 5, and hit the low of 4480 on Friday. This is a slide of 200 points.

Now that the index has bounced back, it has the potential to jump up to at least 4625-4630 region. But then you have a Tuesday intervening!

But in as much asthe index closed 70 points higher, there is a good chance it can lose just 25 points on Tuesday - say uptil around 4527 - 4533. From technical indicators, it is apparent that it will take a while for the index to make a decisive move either way.

Until it can give such a direction, there is no escape from two way possibilities. But if one were to give due weightage to Monday's movements, the balance of favour is towards Sensex to inch up northwards. And traders can ill afford to wait for a final direction to emerge. In other words, there is no escape but to recognise the positive signal of Monday, and go long on selected scrips. For what you need to keep focused is the possibility of the market making a swift thrust upwards. The thrust could end up a short term or a continue to strengthen further. That is impossible to predict just now.