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It's the last Monday of the month and Covid-19 continues to be the headline and the driver of almost all activity be it political, business or personal. The promise of a $2 trillion dollar stimulus package in the U.S. spurred the markets higher last week. President Trump signed the $2 trillion bi-partisan bill in the Oval Office on Friday. The bill is unlike anything seen before in both scope and size, and aims to help all Americans, immediately provide aid to hospitals, and shore-up the businesses which are being forced to put on the brakes or close altogether in an effort to minimize the spread of the pandemic. In general the markets want to react positively to the plan. Many stocks are now considered oversold and undervalued by some analysts and investors and they are looking for signs to get back into the market.

However, over the weekend continuing tough news around the globe with regard to Covid-19 as dampened some of the enthusiasm of last week. Asian markets closed lower today, the one bright spot being Australia where stimulus news there, buffeted the market higher. As we head into the trading week, the Dow Jones is looking like a bull and the S&P 500 like a bear based on last week's numbers and the "bottom" a hesitant and cautious tentative Yes for some and a pessimistic No for most. Here's what a few TalkMarkets' contributors have to say:

Vivian Lewis writing in an exclusive for TalkMarkets "The Sell-Off Reversal?" she discusses some bullish opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry as companies look to find solutions for coronavirus related problems. "Prodded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a group of major drug companies have agreed to exchange data to speed up trials to find a drug for the Coronavirus. Among the companies signing up are Eisai of Japan (ESALY); Glaxo (GSK) of Britain; Novartis (NVSEF) of Switzerland; Sanofi (SNYNF) of France, and Bristol-Myers (BMY), Merck (MRK), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) of the US."She notes in particular that one of her holdings, "Thermo Fisher (TMO), rose 3.25% after it got the CE mark in Europe for its coronavirus diagnostic test."

Still, Lewis writes that she spent part of last week, selling portfolio holdings such as Delek Group (DGRLY). She likes Nutrien (NTR) a Canadian fertilizer vendor whose stock was selling at $30 with a target price is $45, but could go up 50% based on GoldmanSachs analysis. She notes looking for safe havens in U.S. Treasury related ETFs; "I bought more SPDR Bloomberg Barclays 10-yr TIPS, TIPX. The stock is up 1.6% today on inflation risks. I am trying to also buy US inflation indexed bonds in SPIP, Spider Barclays TIPS ETF.

Andre Gratian, tries hard to distill some optimism from the charts in his article "First Countertrend Rally Repelled" writing as follows with regard to the SPX hourly chart, "The hourly chart (displayed here) focuses on the late stages of the decline and last week’s rally. It’s not easy to conceptualize that this rally represents almost 500 SPX points, and I do not expect current volatility to subside. Friday’s last half hour decline into the close consisted of nearly 70 points! We might as well get used to this “new normal”...We should expect at least a 50% retracement of the rally into the next cycle low, to just above 2400."

Gratian looks at other major ETF charts IWM, PAAS, UUP, GDX and BNO as well, and concludes that this week's rally was much stronger than what he predicated a weak earlier and " If we do not make a new low (this week) into the 80-day cycle, the odds will favor a new recovery high after it has bottomed."

Paban Pandey writing this morning in his article "Dow Fulfills Technical Definition Of New Bull Market, Not S&P 500, Which Is What Matters" tackles head-on by looking at the charts if we are out of the woods of not. "It has only been five weeks since the longest bull market in U.S. stocks ended February 19th. The massive three-day rally last week has raised some confusion as to if a new one is already underway. The technical definition of a bull market is a 20-percent rise from a previous low. On this basis, the Dow Industrials (DIA) closed on 18591.93 last Monday, rising to 22552.17 by Thursday. The 21.3-percent rally from the low fulfills the technical definition of a bull market. This, of course, assumes the March 23rd low does not get breached in the days and weeks ahead. Other indices, however, are not there yet. From low to high on a closing basis, the Nasdaq Composite (COMP) only rallied 13.7 percent, the Russell 2000 (IWM) small cap index, which bottomed on the 18th, 19.1 percent, and the S&P 500 large cap index 17.6 percent. Being an index made up of the largest U.S. companies, the S&P 500 (SPY) has the clout and is used by the investing community as the arbiter in this regard. For this reason, it is a still a bear."

I'll leave it to you to dig deeper into the article, but Pandey does provide some of that optimism we are looking for by concluding that putting "the bull-bear debate aside and regardless of whether or not last week’s low marks the bottom in this bear market, stocks likely are at the beginning stages of a bottom."

J. Brumley of TalkMarkets contributor publication Big Trends cautiously looks at last week's rally as a positive signal, but also looks at other key market indicators like the US housing market in an article entitled "That Was A Reversal Signal, But A Stimulus-Induced One". His reaction to last week's stock market rally is this: "What a week. The 17.7% rally between Monday's and Thursday's closes translated into a full-week gain of 10.2%, which is the best week for the market since 1938. Not bad. We're still in no-man's land, of course. This "best week" for stocks follows a "worst four weeks" for the market, which shaved a total of 30.8% off the S&P 500's value before the bulls finally started to fight back. It's entirely possible last week was only a dead-cat bounce induced by news of the stimulus, and we could still see a renewed downtrend reshape from here. It all depends on the perception of the impact of the coronavirus."

It certainly does! Brumley surveys the charts and upcoming economic news and forecasts for this week, though recommends not putting too much stock in any new economic data coming out because most of it has too, little of the impact of the coronavirus included in the data. With regard to jobs data he says "take the current outlooks with a grain of salt. Forecasters have literally never faced anything quite like this, and are throwing darts with a blindfold on. The good news is, employment was one of the economy's strongest aspects before the coronavirus took hold, so the overall jobs picture is still, relatively speaking, not bad. It just needs to survive the jolt and get back to normal quickly." More optimism.

Toward the end of the article Brumley goes through all the major stock market charts, searching for and finding positive signs, so worth a look. Still he does not leave his optimism unguarded noting that "fear could easily cause selling in the immediate future, at the drop of a hat. Keep playing it close to the vest, and don't dig in too deep... on either side of the fence."

Michael Snyder in "The Economic Depression Of 2020: Many Of The Restaurants, Bars And Retailers That Have Closed Will Never Open Again" steps away from the markets and the charts and looks at some of the real victims of the economic events triggered by Covid-19. Writing in stark terms he notes that the US restaurant industry has lost $25 billion since the start of the month and that according to the National Restaurant Association, "Three percent of restaurants have already permanently closed due to the coronavirus crisis, forty-four percent of operators have temporarily closed their restaurants, and 11% anticipate they will permanently close within 30 days."

He further cites that the Wall Street Journal has reported that "Companies of all sizes are feeling the squeeze, especially retailers and restaurants that have closed their doors during the outbreak. Nike Inc. (NKE) is asking to pay half its rents. TJ Maxx is delaying payments to its suppliers. Victoria’s Secret and Men’s Wearhouse have furloughed thousands of workers. Cheesecake Factory Inc. closed 27 of the company’s locations and furloughed 41,000 hourly workers, nearly 90% of its total staff." Snyder does not foresee a return to normalcy in the near future and says "the consequences for the U.S. economy are going to be extremely, extremely bitter."

That's our "Monday Chat" for now. We'll be back with another contributor round-up next week (and next month). In the meantime, keep calm and keep your social distance.