But Nomura's Bob Janjuah, a strategist and noted perma-bear, thinks that the recent uptick is only a brief bounce along the market's prolonged descent.
"To reiterate my bearish views on risk assets for H1 2016 - I continue to see much lower equity prices, lower core bond yields, wider credit spreads, and weakness in EM and commodities over the next four months (at least)," wrote Janjuah in a note to clients Friday.
"In January I said that the S&P500 would fall from 2000/2050 to the 1500s as my target over 2016. I reaffirm this view."
The drop all the way to 1,500 isn't going to happen all at once, said Janjuah, but the next sell-off will get us to about halfway there in the next month and change.
"To highlight that, in my view, stocks' counter-trend bounce off the February lows has now run its course and I believe we are - in early March - likely to see the onset of the next leg weaker in risk, vs stronger in core duration," Janjuah wrote in a note Friday. "I expect this next leg of weakness to last three to five weeks and to result in new lows so far in this cycle in stocks (S&P500 into the 1700s) and new lows in core government bond yields (target 1.5% in 10yr USTs)."
Janjuah also highlighted the fact that surges such as the past week are not uncommon in long-term bear markets, but they shouldn't fool anyone.
Here's his reminder:
It is important to remember that in bear markets the strength is to the downside, the violence is to the upside, with counter-trend rallies in bear markets often being the most painful. Markets simply do not go down (or up) in straight lines. But if I am right that this bounce is over, we should continue to see a series of lower lows and lower highs in stocks around the globe.
While the reasons for the coming downturn are plentiful, in Janjuah's opinion, central bankers have played a particularly notable role for setting up the decline.
"We are entering an extremely worrying time and we have got here even faster that I had feared - a place where monetary policy and central banks become the problem and not the cure," Janjuah wrote. "The Fed is in a hole of its own making by using self-serving metrics to fix a debt and asset bubble crisis with a policy that relies on more debt and even bigger asset bubbles."
With the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan meeting soon and introducing more easing Janjuah believes that all of these institutions have lost credibility and due to that he was inclined "to consider even more bearish targets" for stocks, but will wait.