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It would be strange if the stock market's gentle idle near 57-month highs didn't begin to sound to some ears like whispered advice to do some selling into the summer-long rally, not because some imminent threat is obvious but because they almost never are.

So it is that corporate insiders, one group that's often quick to harvest windfalls, have been active on the offer side of the market in their employers' shares, with sellers outnumbering buyers by more than six to one, says ISI Group strategist Bijal Shah. That weekly level has been reached just four times since early 2010. While this hasn't always proved an urgent danger signal, it has tended to precede a softer period for economic momentum and the equity tape.

Stocks' recent win streak over government bonds will likely prompt some mechanized profit-taking as the third quarter drifts to a close this week, too. Marko Kolanovic of JPMorgan's equity-derivatives desk notes that, as of Thursday, stocks had outperformed bonds by about 10% this quarter and 11% in September. As rigid asset allocators rebalance following such a run, usually in the final week of a quarter, they will be net sellers of stocks to purchase bonds, typically reversing a small but notable portion of that outperformance.

Back in early June, when the Standard & Poor's 500 index had given up nearly all of its early-2012 gains in an anxious correction as Europe wobbled anew, the number of bullish market newsletter writers exceeded the bears in the weekly Investors Intelligence survey by only seven percentage points. Had any of them been asked then if they'd take a year-to-date gain in the index of better than 16% by Oct. 1, nearly all would have answered yes.

Yet now, with the market up exactly that much, the percentage of bulls looking for even more exceeds that of the skeptics by nearly the 30-point span that signifies the onset of a potentially unhelpful complacency. Combined with an excess of bullish call options versus puts, and the fact that once again last week the broad market was supported by defensive rather than growth-sensitive stocks and sectors, the picture of a market unlikely to run away to the upside becomes clearer.

This set of clues advising against chasing stocks too zealously—and perhaps motivating some profit-taking by those who enjoy converting their marked-to-market luck or acumen into cash—has greatest relevance for the short-term outlook. The popular notion that the excessively comfortable mood of traders could dissipate with a brief retreat or mere sideways tedium, setting up the next advance, can't be dismissed.

Neither can the optimists' base case: Stocks have so far shrugged off the historical headwind of challenging Septembers, and the Federal Reserve has told us far in advance that it fully intends to be late in ending its easy-money prescription. With the same sort of cereal-box analysis that insists "all" unaffiliated voters make up their mind for good on a candidate by Labor Day, we're hearing that hedge-fund managers have trailed the market and will "all" be gunning stocks into year end to get paid for their year's toil.

This is a thesis resting on perfectly defensible, but imperfect, tactical and liquidity reasoning, and may be tested soon by some sloppy fundamental inputs, unless the recent run of blah economic data and sporadic corporate-profit shortfalls prove to be another passing phase.

MARKETS AND THE WORLD ECONOMIC pace have not stayed firm enough for long enough for the much-predicted rebound in corporate mergers to arise. Company bust-ups, however, continue to enrich investors.

The Bloomberg Spinoff Index is up more than 30% so far this year and the Guggenheim Spin-Off exchange-traded fund (ticker: CSD) has climbed 19%. As noted in a favorable item on companies cut loose by their parent here March 5, the ETF is a bit flawed because it doesn't pick up spinoffs until they have been independently trading for six months, after which they've often been discovered and bid up.

In a week, shareholders of the $1 billion market-value mini-conglomerate Nacco Industries (NC) will receive shares in forklift maker Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, which represents the majority of Nacco's value. The remainder of Nacco will continue to own a coal producer, the Hamilton Beach small-appliance division, and the Kitchen Collection gourmet retailer.

Despite this collection of familiar brands, the family-controlled Nacco is only minimally covered by Wall Street. Nacco shareholders of record as of Sept. 25 will receive a share of Hyster-Yale for each Nacco share owned, and both will begin trading separately Oct. 1. Joe Cornell, analyst at Spin-Off Advisors in Chicago, is bullish on Hyster-Yale, in part because the spin will allow it to participate in industry consolidation.

Using sober assumptions and comparable-company valuations as a guide produces a sum-of-parts value for Nacco following the spin at between $140 and $165 a share, up from Nacco's Friday closing level of $112.48.

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