After noting that the action in the stock futures market has been moving around furiously since the big bank CEOs met with Obama, Jessie suggests the following:

To our minds, it is just as likely that we are being set up for a terrific leg down. In our experience the big dogs tend to dominate certain portions of the short side at the apogee of a stock market pump. Our target for a failure point on the SP June futures is about 858-864.

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Let's see if they can keep it floating up. This does not look like a sustained ramp however, but the pump that sets up the dump.

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The best probability based on the data at hand is that we are seeing a pump and dump, in order to provide some income to the beleaguered banks through their proprietary trading desks.

We have not been tracking it, but we wonder if Goldman Sachs has fully placed its large secondary equity offering designed to pay back their TARP funds. The markets often miraculously levitate in sympathetic conjunction with key IPOs and equity tranches.  If they have, then the pump and dump gains in likelihood.