The S&P 500 has been behaving well – relatively. Since its latest bottom on March 9, it’s done a good job of pushing upward 26.6%. Since last week’s recap the S&P is up a noticeable 4.9%. But the question now is whether the trend will continue…

If you take a look at the chart above, the S&P is rising, but it’s curving – meaning that the rate at which it’s moving it beginning to taper off. That’s somewhat disconcerting for investors who are going long now. What’s important to note is the fact that the tapering we’ve seen over the last week could just be the market consolidating – only one day closed lower than the previous this week, and volume stayed consistent: that’s a good sign.

Another good sign is the bounce the market made around the end of March. The S&P hit its 50-day moving average (the graph of its average price over the trailing 50 days), and bounced off – that’s a bullish signal that indicates investors aren’t willing to part with stocks below that level. For now.

It’s Earnings Season

Part of the reason that the market has been up so notably this week is because it’s earnings season. As companies start to let investors know how the first quarter of 2009 treated their corporate coffers we’re going to be able to get an idea of just how much longer we’ll be talking recession. So far, it’s been a mixed bag.

Early in the week lower retail sales pushed the market down despite companies like Johnson & Johnson and Goldman Sachs reporting better than expected earnings on Tuesday. And yesterday beleaguered bank JP Morgan delivered record-breaking revenues. Not everyone beat analyst expectations, though – big names like Intel and Southwest Airlines missed their numbers, and their stocks tumbled as a result.

Watch the Rhino Stocks

The Rhino Stock Report’s portfolio is doing very well right now. This week, our stop loss on j2 Global Communications (NASDAQ: JCOM) triggered, selling the position off at a 40% gain.

At present three of our remaining open positions – EMCORE (NYSE: EME), Iconix Brand Group (NASDAQ:ICON), and Computer Sciences Corp (NYSE: CSC) are up double digits as of this writing.

Since the markets will be closed tomorrow in observance of Good Friday, our normal Firday market update is going out today. And since the markets seem to be moving based on fundamentals this week, I thought we should take a look at a market timeline instead of the traditional technical chart:

As you can see from the S&P 500 6-month chart above, there’s been a lot of news moving the markets in the past two quarters.

The S&P is up 2.28% since last Friday, pushed largely by Wells Fargo’s record earnings announcement today. While banking stocks have been out of favor for a while, the revelation that Wells expects to rake in $3 billion in profits sent the sector up in a big way.

The announcement managed to outweigh Wal-Mart’s flat sales in March.

It’s true that fundamentals seem to once again be taking their rightful place in moving this market. While last week’s market predictions still hold, earnings season is bringing a whole new element to how things should stand for the coming week.

Hopefully, investors are beginning to realize that contrary to popular belief, value investing isn’t dead (if you haven’t read my take on why, click here)… What could be better proof of that than our performance to date?

Position Update

At present, our open positions are up 10.18% on average, lead by j2 Global Communications (JCOM), up 43.3%, EMCOR Group (EME), up 23%.

SPX Corp (SPW) and Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) are up 16% and 14% respectively.

What even more exciting is the fact that our original Rhino Stock position, Iconix Brand Group (ICON) burst into positive gains today, currently up by 3.16%. This stock has been oversold on technicals, and is finally starting to regain ground.

Along with our closed positions, which average 24%, we’re looking at total returns of 15% since inception. During that same time, the rest of the market was down 12%.

That means we’re outperforming the S&P 500 by 27%. Let’s keep those returns coming in 2009.

Disclosure: All stocks mentioned are long positions in the Rhino Stock Report’s model portfolio.