• Of the central-bank statements that are on their way, this is the one to watch.

"One last thing."

  -- Lt, Columbo

This evening and tomorrow morning, policy statements by the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan will be delivered.

I expect each of the central banks to reaffirm their easy-money policies. This is the consensus expectation, and such policy statements appear to be fully discounted.

The Bank of Japan will likely ease further through asset purchases (quantitative easing).

But the one to watch is the ECB, which could cut its target rate (currently at 0.75%). More likely though, is that Draghi gives a hint that the next meeting will be the setting for a rate cut. If he doesn't, more pressure could be injected into risk markets. (Note: Money market rates in Europe are already lower than the target rate. so a rate cut would be "symbolic.")

• To my lovers and haters it is nice to be back in the saddle.

A sincere thanks to Tim "Not Phil or Judy" Collins for doing such a great job on Monday and Tuesday.

TC approached his assignment with bountiful analysis, balance of view, grace and, perhaps most importantly, a pen filled with humor and wit.

Enjoy your evening and thanks for reading.

• How much to buy?

My mavens on the floor of the exchange see $1.1 billion to buy on the close.

Financials are leading the way with $415 million to buy, followed by energy with $120 million to buy and health care with $100 million to buy.

There are no sectors to sell on the close.

In terms of individual stocks, Citigroup (C) has $112.5 million to buy, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has $80 million to buy, and Bank of America (BAC) has $65 million to buy.

There are no meaningful individual equity sales at the close.

• North Korea's comments regarding retaliation against the U.S. is taking the market to day's lows now.

• R. Scott McCreary sold 95,000 shares.

Today, we have a large insider sale in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) by R. Scott McCreary.

Again, here is a case of an early exercise of a call option position (with an expiration in another three years on May 3, 2016).

• I picked up shares at $432.30.

I am buying back a small long position in Apple at $432.30, but you all knew I would as the shares moved back into my buying range.

• Now 10% long on TBT.

I am moving back to a 10% short bond weighting on today's fixed-income weakness -- I bought ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (TBT) under $64 just now.

I know I have been flip-flopping worse than John Kerry on my short bond position, but I am just moving around based on the data feed and controlling my risk profile.

I am confident in the TBT as a long-term investment -- just uncertain (given slowing global growth) as to the near-term outcome.

• Here's some market commentary that's worth your time.

Take a chill pill and take break from the market in order to run (not walk!) to read these three pearls of commentary and editorials:

* Pimco's Bill Gross, "A Man in the Mirror" 

* David Stockman, "State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America"

* Dr. John Hussman, "We Should Have Already Learned How This Will End"  

• I'm about 6% long TBT.

In response to email queries, I currently have about a 6% long position in ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (TBT).

• Here are some worrisome charts.

Let me change my hat and act like a technician (with apologies for my primitive analysis to TC and The Divine Ms. M.).

Below are some examples of charts that are worrisome to this fundamental analyst:

• Citigroup (C)
• Morgan Stanley (MS)
• Goldman Sachs (GS)
• Delta Air Lines (DAL)
• Conversely a parabolic move in Procter & Gamble (PG) is worrisome, too.
• And then there is Apple (AAPL)!

• Here they are.

We have a lot to digest today, below are some must-reads and must-sees.

• Tweet of the day: "The 'Great Rotation' of 2013 is neither great, nor a rotation, discuss..." (hat tip to "Fast Money's" Steve "Hernán" Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, the 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca!)
  
  @dougkass The "Great Rotation" of 2013 is neither great, nor a rotation, discuss...
  
  — Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) April 3, 2013
• Video of the day: Los Angeles Dodgers first pitch (with my cousin Sandy Koufax at about 6 minutes and 30 seconds into it)
• Real Money Pro column of the day: "Beam Me Up" Scotty Redler's "Off the Charts"
• Real Money column of the day: "Why Shouldn't Microsoft Buy Netflix?" (by Jim "El Capitan" Cramer)

• My favorite long is Chimera, and my favorite short is Nationstar.

Favorite long: Chimera Investment (CIM).

Favorite short: Nationstar (NSM).

• Out-of the-money May puts, specifically.

I am buying Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) out-of-the-money May puts after the recent short squeeze.

• It stinks.

Below is the punk market breadth as of 10:25 a.m. EDT:

• S&P 500 -- 124 to 370
• NYSE -- 435 to 1,378
• Nasdaq -- 717 to 1,271
• Russell 2000 -- 547 to 1,283

Volume is 22% higher than the past 10-day average, 5% higher than the past 30-day average and 10% higher than yesterday for this time of day.

Below is an intraday chart of the breadth of the above referenced indices (left to right S&P, NYSE, Nasdaq and Russell 2000.

Breadth

Source: Bloomberg

View Chart »View in New Window »

• They were negative for crude, with a bigger build than expected.

• Namely, May 160s.

I am buying/bidding for SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) May 160 puts now.

• The market advance is narrowing, divergences are emerging, and global economic growth may be slowing.

"If there was ever a misleading day, this [Tuesday, April 2, 2013] was it."

-- Dan Greenhaus, BTIG

Since I have been away over the past two days, the S&P 500 has risen by only about 2 points.

Nevertheless, some subsurface weakness and emerging divergences have been developing, a thinning out that has historically presaged broader declines:

• The Russell 2000 underperformed on Monday (-1.3%) and was down (-0.5%) on an up day on Tuesday.
• The advance/decline line is eroding as the market's rise narrows.
• Breadth disappointed - yesterday, NYSE decliners eclipsed advancing issues by over 200, excluding ETFs and fixed-income closed-end funds.
• The number of new 52-week highs is narrowing.
• The bank stocks/brokerages are lagging.
• Transports trailed, down 1.5% and 1.2% on the first two days of the week, respectively -- check out the chart of FedEx (FDX).
• Semis got schmeissed (-2.0% on Monday and -0.8% on Tuesday).
• The cyclical index dropped by -0.7% on Tuesday, following a 1.2% decline on Monday -- check out the chart of Caterpillar (CAT).
• The yield on the 10-year U.S. note remains low (1.86%) and is signaling slowing domestic economic growth -- speaking of the bond market, this week brought a continued disconnect between Treasury note and bond yields (lower by 3 to 4 basis points) compared to the market averages (slightly higher in price).
  
  

  10-Year Treasury Note vs. S&P 500

  Source: Bloomberg

  View Chart »View in New Window »

On the other hand, the consumer nondurables/staples sector has been on fire, with continued gains in the share prices of Procter & Gamble (PG), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Clorox (CLX), General Mills (GIS), Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP) and the like, and so has the traditionally defensive health care group.

It is an unusual market feature when defensive stocks are among the leading groups in a market moving to new highs.

Global Economic Growth Is Slowing

Besides the aforementioned weakness in market breadth and divergences, this week has brought additional and continuing signs of slowing domestic economic growth.

Some of the data suggest that my estimate of first-quarter 2013 real GDP growth of +2.75% to +3.25% -- most Wall Street firms are at +3.25% to +3.50% -- may be unsustainable over the balance of the year.

March ISM (at 51.3 vs. expectations of 54.0 and February at 54.2) was well below expectations, as the January-February inventory rebuild appears to have been nearly completed, leading to a moderation in manufacturing activity in the last four weeks of the quarter. New orders were especially poor, falling below the six-month average.

U.S. bond yields continue to slip (now at 1.86%).

Citigroup's U.S. Economic Surprise Index has recently fallen to a four-week low, and the non-U.S. surprise indices are all also moving down. (Note: Worsening economic trends have resulted in my paring back, once again, of my short bond position, as I continue to try to position myself for the best possible entry point for a long-term play in the asset class.)

After the close on Tuesday, March (SAAR) automobile sales came in at 15.22 million units, slightly less than expectations of 15.32 million and below February's print of 15.3 million. March's deliveries were the weakest since October 2012 and have more or less flat-lined since November's nice increase -- and so have the shares of Ford (F) and General Motors (GM) been virtually unchanged over the last three months.

Over there, the southern area of the eurozone is in an economic death spiral. France's economy is imploding, and its government seems even more dysfunctional than ours. Also, many of us don't know what to believe about China's economic data, which seems to be disconnected with on-the-ground data. (Note: The HSBC Services PMI climbed to 54.3 in March , up from February's 52.1 and the highest since September.)

Finally, Goldman Sachs' final March GLI now places the global industrial cycle in a "slowdown phase," characterized by still-positive but declining momentum.

From Hero to Goat

There is little question that investors are feeling the pressure of underperformance. Hedge funds are now at their highest net long exposure in some time, sentiment studies are uniformly bullish, and retail investors are warming up to stocks.

For those who are of the view that the U.S. stock market feels like it will never decline (and that global easing is the panacea for growth and ever-rising share prices), we suggest you look at the price of gold in mid-September 2011 and/or the price of Apple's (AAPL) shares in late-September 2012. At those points in time, investor sentiment was at an extreme. Now look at the subsequent price drops following those heights and where those prices stand today.

Many are certain of a continued market climb into 2014. Unfortunately, the only thing I remain certain of is the lack of certainty and that some of the conditions described above are consistent with classic top signs over stock market history.

In Bernanke We Trust

The lift in the S&P 500 in first quarter 2013 was clearly a reflection of the better-than-expected real GDP growth, abetted by broad-based central bank easing. Of course, massive monetary intervention has been the primary difference between March 2013 and other periods. At least domestically, however, I view the marginal impact of quantitative easing as not trickling down into the real economy, though it has clearly buoyed equities and fixed-income securities. And I strongly view global growth dependent on central bank easing (which still appears not to be self-sustaining) as an inherently low-quality state, deserving a less robust valuation than accorded in prior periods. (First-quarter 2013 real GDP of nearly +3% should decelerate to gains of +1.5% to +2.0% in the last three quarters of the year.)

The Crowd Continues to Outsmart the Remnants

To be sure, the naysayers (such as myself) have been vilified, and any further top talk has now become almost indistinguishable from "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," as the averages have powered higher and have resisted crisis after crisis.

This morning's opening observations do not guarantee a top -- indeed, the recent internal divergences could be remedied and reversed. The technicals could improve, as they have at numerous stages of the current rally.

They do, however, point to current conditions that in the past have indicated a top.

Summary

Mr. Market's recent move higher has been unbalanced (measured by breadth and sector outperformance/underperformance), as it has been led by nearly parabolic moves in consumer staples and health care stocks, while the optimistic forecasts of accelerating and self-sustaining economic growth are not being validated by the lagging smaller-caps, industrials, technology and other economically sensitive sectors.

Citigroup's surprise indices for the U.S., Europe and the emerging market economies are all weakening -- in the EU and in emerging markets, the surprise indices have actually turned negative.

A slowing in global GDP after a strong first quarter (importantly buoyed by inventory replenishment after a fourth-quarter 2012 inventory contraction) will likely define worldwide economic growth over the balance of the year.

To the extent that the outsized first-quarter 2013 stock market gains were a product of better-than-expected growth, the next few months of market returns could be adversely impacted by less-than-expected growth in the real economy and in corporate profits.

As well, a stronger U.S. dollar coupled with slowing global growth should pose a challenge to optimistic consensus earnings expectations for 2013.

Other meaningful non-confirming technical divergences (discussed earlier) are increasingly conspicuous.

My personal experience is that when I have found myself as frustrated as I am these days, the best thing to do is to take a few deep breaths, reassess one's analysis/conclusions and if proven to still be in place, ignore the cheerleading and uninterrupted price rise.

Every subscriber must develop his/her own view of the market's risk/reward as well as that of individual stocks, with time frames and risk tolerance being the most important ingredients to that decision.

Unless the economy accelerates from first-quarter 2013 growth and/or central banks become even easier than is generally expected -- I expect neither of these developments -- it remains my view that the market's risk/reward ratio remains resoundingly unfavorable, and few individual longs meet my buy criteria.

I am sticking with my analysis and investment process, and I am battening down the (investment) hatches.

• Let's take a peek at the overnight and early-morning markets.

There is a flat beat overnight around the globe:

• S&P futures up 2;
• European markets down;
• euro flat;
• crude down 0.60;
• gold down 7; and
• the yield on the 10-year U.S. note is at 1.86%.

The topic of today's opening missive is whether the foundation of the market is weakening and whether certain internal features are giving off a red flag and implying slowing global growth or, on the other hand, we are in the midst of another healthy rotation characteristic of much of the recent market ramp.

• Here's what the analysts are up to this morning.

Caterpillar (CAT) is downgraded to Neutral by Goldman Sachs, both Cohen & Steers (CNS) and Legg Mason (LM) are downgraded to underperform at Brother Bank of America/Mother Merrill.

• Here it is.

Below is the economic calendar for today and tomorrow.