While many people are still enjoying extended holiday breaks or are busy cashing in those ubiquitous gift cards, Wall Street has been gently pushing stocks higher. And higher. And higher. Enough to push the S&P 500 back over its 200-day moving average, the line of demarcation between bull and bear phases, for the first time since October.

Catalysts for the move have been a relative calming of the eurozone debt crisis (though it's changing for the worse again with Italian borrowing costs surging back over 7%) and some better-than-expected​ economic data here at home. Plus, stocks just tend to do well during the final few weeks of the year. Chalk it up to holiday cheer.

The question is: Can the positive momentum last and keep stocks out of bear market territory?

Setting aside discussions of the economy -- which has largely been kept out of the ditch by consumers drawing down savings, an unsustainable trend -- from a technical market perspective, I don't think it can.

Breadth is narrowing substantially as the bulls focus on fewer and fewer stocks, and those stocks are defensive noncyclicals that tend to outperform in the final moments before the most harrowing turns of a new bear market.

Specifics: Take Tuesday's sideways crawl. Despite all the major averages spending the day in the green, there were only 97 net advancing issues on the NYSE as the closing bell loomed. That's down nearly 92% from Friday's finish and down from more than 2,300 net advancing issues on Dec. 20. That's a sign that higher prices aren't encouraging a buying frenzy. It's drawing out supply as sellers use higher prices to cut risky positions.

That's bear market behavior.

Moreover, investors who are buying are focusing on health care, utility, telecom and consumer staples while shunning industrials, technology, emerging markets and materials. This isn't the strategy you follow if you see brighter days ahead for the global economy; it's a strategy you follow if you are searching for dividends, stability and safety in an increasingly volatile and uncertain environment.

This is also bear market behavior.

The chart above shows that when the Consumer Staples SPDR ETF(XLP), which includes stocks like Wal-Mart(WMT) and Colgate-Palmolive(CL), outpaces the overall market, it tends to be a short-lived affair. You can see this in the chart above, which shows how the XLP marched to a new high in mid-2008 just weeks before Lehman Bros. failed, the financial crisis raged and stocks plunged.

If cyclical stocks can retake the reins and the S&P 500 can extend beyond the 200-day average on expanding breadth, then I'll eat my words and join the chorus of the optimists. But until then, I continue to recommend investors use this rebound as a last selling opportunity ahead of what's shaping up to be a dark and troubled new year.

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The author can be contacted at anthony@edgeletter.c​​om and followed on Twitter at @EdgeLetter. You can view his current stock picks here. Feel free to comment below.