A lot of people are hunting signals on where the market goes from here and it looks a little desperate. While talk about January effects and Santa rallies and “bad” Santa rallies is statistically interesting, most of it boils down to odds only a little more than a coin flip.

Heads, the bulls get the opening advantage. Tails, the bear is back. But everyone knows the long game is a lot more than who wins the first few plays.

However, I can sympathize with the urge to figure out the year before its first week is over. There’s a lot of anxiety out there. People are still looking over their shoulder to see if the bear is truly gone. I saw one strategist speculating about whether all the progress Wall Street made last year was just a gigantic bear market rally . . . an illusion.

I don’t think so. If you factored out all the head fakes and false signals, there wouldn’t much time left to actually trade. You simply can’t hang back on the sidelines until you’re sure you know where the market is going.

If you wait that long, you’ll miss it. And in my experience, moments like this when other investors are confused and struggling for conviction are the time when you really want to jump into the market with both feet.

Let’s work through it. We’ve all lived through a serious bear market that stripped all the happy illusions from Wall Street. Before that, there were other bear markets in recent years. Between them, we’ve faced shock after shock.

It’s enough to make anyone more than a little jumpy and distrusting. When you’re always braced for another shock, it’s hard to accept the good things that can happen in the market.

That becomes a problem because a lot of good things have happened over the past year. The S&P 500 climbed 20%. That’s unusual . . . not quite straining the statistical limits, but it can feel too generous when you’re used to struggling for every percentage point.

And so the gains need to be tested and confirmed before anyone can trust them, much less build on the progress they’ve already made. This is consolidation. It means going back and showing your work, proving that the initial rally was more than a fluke or a fantasy.

The last week can be giving some of you bear market flashbacks. But all in all, the S&P 500 is only down 2% from its recent high. Nothing to get nervous about yet, especially when you consider how far the market has come back.

Most of the gains from last year are holding. It would take a much, much deeper downswing to take them away. That’s real enough for right now. Whatever froth is churning around in the market is being eliminated now.

From there, we’ll have a strong base for future gains. That’s what consolidation does. It takes a little time, but when it’s over, everyone will know exactly where we stand.