I'm what you call a "lone rider" these days. While most analysts and economists are negative on the stock market and economy, I believe (while having been negative on the economy from 2005 to 2007) that I may be the only forecaster out there today who is short-term bullish on the stock market.

Yes, U.S. home foreclosure filings were up 57% this past March from a year ago. Yes, U.S. bankruptcy filings by American businesses and consumers were up 38% in 2007 from 2006. Yes, 232,000 jobs have been lost in the U.S. so far in 2008. And yes, consumer sentiment has dropped to a 26-year low.

But the stock market doesn't care about what happened in the past or what is happening today. High foreclosures, lots of bankruptcies, job losses, and falling consumer sentiment are events that I started writing in 2005 that I thought would happen.

Like the stock market, I'm concerned with events that will occur in the future. And, as I have been writing of late, the stock market's actions of late indicate better times ahead for companies and the economy. Let's just look at the undisputed facts:

While we continue to read and hear negative things about the U.S. economy, the stock market was on a tear last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up a whopping 525 points in the last five trading sessions -- that's a gain of 4.3% in a week.

Since I wrote my article entitled, "Stock Market Says Economy Not as Bad as it Seems" in PROFIT CONFIDENTIAL on March 17, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has quietly risen 10%. This is a big-time gain.

An interesting daily figure I follow closely (and something most stockbrokers and business reports are clueless about the significance of) is the number of new highs and new lows posted by stocks on the various stock exchanges.

If we look at the grandest of all stock markets, the New York Stock Exchange, we see that, on January 22, 2008, over 1,100 stocks posted new 52-week lows on the NYSE. Since then, fewer and fewer stocks have been hitting new 52-week lows.

If we look at last Friday, there were less than 20 stocks on the NYSE that posted new 52-week lows. This is a complete turnaround for the stock market and indicative of higher stock prices ahead. While most investors are cutting down on their investments and moving to cash (something I said they should have been doing in 2005 to 2007), astute investors should be increasing their stock market exposure at this time.