Is the market bottom in or are we getting close?

When you look at todays price action a reversal off of 2691 in the S&P500 at about 10am. Maybe there is one thing missing and that is a real good flushing from the market in put/call. If you put this in the context of the last 4 or 5 days, we have to get this market above the 2,760 level to signal the all-clear call. But, what we think is notable is that roughly 80% of stocks in the S&P500 hit a one month low about a week ago. My skeptical side tells me we have to retest a few more times before we can start basing sideways until the mid-term elections are over.Take us through what investors seem to be reacting too in these recent weeks that they have ignored before October began. We think it is actually things that we have already talked about for months. Such as the Fed is going to go to far on rates, fear that the trade war with China will continue on into January when the tariff's jump to 25%. Fears that are relationship with Saudi Arabia is deteriorating very rapidly and those with China as well. Also, there is a whole host of other things such as peak earnings have played into the mix and have been talked away until finally the market gave up and gave up ground here. All of sudden the market decided it all mattered over the last month.Indices and funds have basically given back their gains for the entire year in the month of October. What has gotten us here: Interest Rate concern, trade war concerns, risk parity accounts, and a global slow down. We believe that this is primarily about interest rates, on October 3rd Powell speaks and ever since the market in fixated on the rate picture and the other stuff globally does not help. Everything that we have heard on CNBC for days was if the market continues to go down will the Fed say something that is conducive to the market recovering such as it would pause rate increases if the economy is slowing. Also, Will the Fed continue tightening in the face of what appears already to be a slowdown in the interest sensitive sectors of the economy which is housing and automobiles.In the short-term the broad U.S. market is down about 7% percent in a month. In practical terms, we think that we ought to be careful. We all get greedy at times and we want to time the market and try to get a good entrée point for it. But why not wait a bit for the moving averages to move up, why not wait for more stability. Every year after mid-term elections since the 1950's the market has gone up on average 12% percent. That is a pretty good return considering all the other off-years have averaged less than that. Why not wait for the trend to reestablish itself a little bit perhaps after the mid-term elections and make sure that the market picks up a little bit before committing new money into the market for the long-term. That way your at least catching the ride wave up instead of trying to time the market bottom and missing it.Sectors we still have confidence are : Healthcare, Consumer discretionary, Select quality TechThank you,John C. Verducci 111