Over the past six months, the stock market has gone from inconsolable to imperturbable.

From October through December, every upbeat fundamental trend or would-be positive catalyst was ignored or mocked by a seller-dominated market that dropped just about 20 percent from high to low over three months.

Third-quarter earnings up 20 percent? Cute, but old news, the market answered. Corporate buyback window re-opens in November? Not a factor, they'll have to buy them lower. Midterm elections "always" followed by gains? Not this time. December "never" the worst month of a year? Just watch.

The market simply had to go lower, and lower still, to exhaust the determined liquidation and price in the end-of-cycle anxieties before any bullish inputs found traction.

Flash to this year, when the cautious or ominous headlines and signals are being shrugged off.

Dramatic market lows after a bad correction are usually "retested" within several weeks, you say? Nope, the S&P 500 is up 23 percent in 3½ months with little more than a 3 percent pullback along the way. Earnings forecasts have been slashed by the most in years and are now posing 4 percent drop for the first quarter? Stocks are apparently looking ahead, and the more-stable-earning sectors have led the upside. Global growth is near stall speed? Sure, but look at those dovish central banks and the "green shoots" in China.

Does this mean the market simply has to go higher, and higher, in order for the downbeat factors to challenge the rally, in a mirror image of last year?

Could well be the case. The S&P 500 is less than a 1.5-percent chip shot from matching its record high set in September, so it would be perverse if the bulls didn't make a closer run at it before too long.

To state what should be obvious: Markets that ignore bad news and turn stubborn investor caution into the best start to a year in 21 years, as this one has, are strong and should get the benefit of the doubt unless and until a routine pullback proves something more than that.

After all, the S&P is simply at levels it first reached some 15 months ago in the furious, giddy rally following the big 2017 corporate tax cut — and markets that reclaim a new high after more than a year going sideways in a jagged range can be said to have formed some kind of base, as happened from 2015-2016.

Credit conditions are steady, Treasury yields are helpfully off their lows — all consistent with equities remaining well-supported.

The stock market likes nothing better than a Federal Reserve that's more dovish than domestic economic conditions seem to warrant, which is what we seem to have, based on the way the U.S. job market has remained strong and the first-quarter stutter-step in GDP growth could turn out quite modest.

But given the firmer data, how much incremental dovishness can be expected, White House calls for a half-percent rate cut notwithstanding?