Kass: Time for Intermission

NEW YORK (Real Money) -- In the midst of the market's schmeissing, on the morning of June 1, I penned a column suggesting that the conditions for a contrarian and sharp market advance (and reversal) might be imminent. The market accommodated that forecast and has risen brilliantly over the past three weeks.

On Monday, my opening missive highlighted the delicious dozen. In that post, I dreamed the dream of 12 factors that could help deliver an explosion to the upside for the U.S. stock market in the second half of 2012.

We can distill my optimism (and the 12 potentially favorable market influences) in Monday's column into three factors that must be resolved before Mr. Market can move to new heights:

• an improvement in domestic economic conditions;
• concrete moves to contain the sovereign debt crisis in Europe; and
• either the implementation of pro-growth fiscal policy and/or a growing probability of a Romney win in the presidential elections in November (as he is seen by market participants as pro-business and pro-market).

I still believe in the dream, but the economic and market realities now must be weighed (and in the future monitored) in order for the dream to be realized and for stocks to move to new highs later in the year.

We have to deal with the following current realities: