We've been through this plenty of times.

Yet people are still tempted by the booming good times and daily reports of indices hitting new highs.

And to think we've always been taught by investment gurus to “buy in when the market is down”.

There's a good reason for that.

After all, how much further up can the stock, or index, run if it's been rising for a while for no attributable reason?

Take the Straits Times Index's current situation.

Try as we may, we simply cannot find one reason for the Singapore market's upswing.

Were there stellar earnings to be pushing the index up?

Perhaps a couple, but the stocks themselves didn't perform that well.

Was it oil prices?

No, because crude futures started to gain ground about the same time the market began to head upwards.

Maybe it's the Federal Reserve's decision to keep interest rates unchanged at 5.25%.

But there's nothing that compelling to push the STI up by 2.3% in under a week.

Same goes for the US market, though Cramer on thestreet.com says perhaps it's an 'Election' theme.

Well at least they've got that.

What do we have in the Singapore market?

So should we buy in, or sit on the sidelines for a bit now?

I say we hold our cash back and wait for the dust to settle.

Serene Lim