While driving back from Lake Tahoe last weekend, I received a call from a dear friend who was in a very foul mood.

Following the advice of another newsletter that I won't mention, he bailed out of all his stocks on the February 9 meltdown. He was promised that Armageddon was coming, and the Dow would hit 3,000.

Despite the Federal Reserve now on a rate rising path, here we are with the major stock indexes just short of all-time highs.

Why the hell are stocks still going up?

I paused for a moment as a kid driving a souped-up Honda weaved into my lane of Interstate 80, cutting me off. Then I gave my friend my response, which I summarize below:

1) There is nothing else to buy. Complain all you want, but US equities are now one of the world's highest yielding securities, with a lofty 2.5% dividend.

2) Oil prices have bottomed, but remain historically low, and the windfall cost savings are only just being felt around the world.

3) While a low Euro (FXE) if definitely eating into large multinational earnings, we are probably approaching the end of the move. The cure for a weak euro is a weak euro. The worst may be behind for US exporters.

4) What follows a collapse in European economic growth? A European recovery, powered by a weak currency. European quantitative easing is working.

5) What follows a Japanese economic collapse? A recovery there, too, as hyper accelerating QE feeds into the main economy. Japanese stocks are now among the world's cheapest. The Japanese yen (FXY ) will probably FALL for the rest of the year, adding more fuel to the fire there.