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One of the most popular knocks about the rally over the past couple of weeks is that it's "Just another bear market rally." There was an avalanche of notes about how the biggest rallies occur in bear markets. That's a given because volatility is higher during downtrends.

But since late March, we've touched a couple of times on the idea that this time is different. It wasn't just a 20% rally (or whatever), because that's not what matters. What matters is how much of the decline is made up during the rally.

And this has been the most impressive recovery in history, even after Tuesday's intraday reversal. Classic technicians will be all over the idea that stocks suffered an intraday reversal at the "classic" 38.2% Fibonacci resistance level.

While it's common knowledge that stocks enjoyed multiple large rallies during prior bear markets, at no point during the rallies in the 1930s or 2008 did stocks manage to claw back as much of the losses as quickly as they've done this time. That's the kind of thing that can really help sentiment - if stocks rally 20% but that only claws back 20% of the drop, then it's not going to have much of an impact.

The S&P 500 bottomed 11 days ago. In that short span, it's retraced nearly 37% of its decline. Below, we can see every date since 1928 when the S&P fell to at least a 52-week low, then retraced at least a third of its decline after 11 days.

The impressive thing about this table is that none of them proved to be "Just a bear market rally." Compare that to times when stocks rallied for 11 days, sometimes for large gains, but didn't manage to retrace even 10% of the decline.

Some of these ended up being true bottoms, but most of the time, they ended up leading to lower lows. This is further confirmation of the idea that it's the retracement of a decline that can shift sentiment in a sustainable way, not just big gains.

Before the intraday reversal on Tuesday, the S&P was on track for an even more impressive retracement, obviously.

That selling pressure looks nasty on a chart, but does it matter? Below, we can see every time in the history of SPY when it:

1. Was trading below its 200-day average
2. Gapped up at least 2% at the open
3. Rallied to at least a 10-day high
4. Reversed enough to close in the bottom 30% of its intraday range.

Like we see so often with chart patterns that look obvious, the actual outcome is a lot different than most expect. It seems like it should be a negative, but it has not been a reliable reason to sell.

Over the past month, there have been a large number of sessions that have seen impressive buying pressure. Whether what we've seen constitutes a breadth thrust is open to interpretation, but Monday's session added to the idea that we have.

During the past 20 sessions, almost half of them have seen the NYSE Up Issues or Up Volume ratios surge above 85%. If both occur on the same day, both are counted because that's an especially strong signal. 

There haven't been many stretches in the past 60 years with such heavy and concentrated buying pressure. This is being calculated before the close on Tuesday, but it's on track to trigger again and would push the current thrust to at least a tie for the most all-time.

The sample size is tiny, but 3 of the 4 saw some give-back over the next week or so, then resumed the upward surge.

Of course, there have also been a large number of days with extremely heavy selling pressure. A record number, actually.

The key is that these heavy buying days have triggered after the surge of heavy selling days already peaked. If we look for times when there were lesser extremes, but with a surge in selling pressure days followed by a surge in buying pressure, then we get the following.

By definition, the table above shows returns after there had already been a surge in buying pressure and a rebound in stocks. Even so, forward returns ere very positive after the first week or two of volatility. The only real failure was in August 2007, which still showed medium-term returns, and that was one of the weaker thrusts in the whole table.

On March 25 and again March 26, we looked at the importance of the historic buying pressure flooding into stocks. It might not meet the definition of a "buying thrust" but those definitions assume that there are rules when it comes to technical or fundamental analysis. There are not. When we consider the implications of what happened, and the context in which it happened, it bodes well for future returns.

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