Although Wall Street is suffering through a slew of worries — among them failing banks, volatile credit markets, slowing worldwide economies, housing slumps, rising inflation, and mounting job losses — some market insiders who have been bearish are now reversing themselves.

The reasons are Tuesday’s monster 331-point rally in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the recent skid in oil prices, and indications from the Federal Reserve that there would be no more rate hikes this year.

Among the bears who are shifting gears is one of the country’s leading technical analysts, Mark Leibovit, head of VRTrader.com, an online stock advisory service. A few weeks ago, he told clients he thought the Dow — then in the upper 11,000s — might soon trade at less than 10,000.

That’s changed. While Mr. Leibovit is not ruling out a market decline in response to disappointing market developments, he now posits that the Dow could experience a rousing 1,000- to 2,000-point rally due chiefly to the break in commodity prices. In fact, his analysis suggests a drop in the price of oil to the $80- to $97-a-barrel range, and a slide in gold to between $760 and $810 an ounce.

“I don’t know if we’re in a bull market, but I just know the game has changed and my indicators say we’re going higher over the next three to four months,” he tells me.

To participate in this projected rise, Mr. Leibovit favors an assortment of exchange-traded funds available under the symbols MDY, IWM, SPY, DIA, and QQQQ.

Another bear, liquidity tracker Charles Biderman, has been bombarding his clients — who include many of the country’s top hedge funds — with his negative market views. In fact, about a week ago, Mr. Biderman, chief executive of West Coast-based TrimTabs Investment Research, sent e-mail messages to clients reiterating that he was fully bearish and 100% short; likewise, he said he felt the economy was going broke with oil trading at more than $120 a barrel.

Now, he says that “if oil continues to decline, say below $110 a barrel, I might turn bullish.” Reflecting this thinking, Mr. Biderman is already covering some personal short positions, primarily in the financial sector.

Given the uncertainties, such as the possibility of production-disrupting Gulf Coast storms or an outbreak of new Middle East hostilities involving Iran, no one, of course, can be certain that oil — which recently tumbled to around $118 from a mid-July peak of $147.27 a barrel — has embarked on a sustained downward spiral. The view gaining popularity, however, is that during the next several months, oil could break below $100 a barrel and possibly drop to around $85 a barrel.

About three weeks ago, in a rampantly bearish market, one of the country’s more astute investment minds, institutional investment adviser Bill Rhodes, a former Merrill Lynch strategist, told me the ingredients were in place to set off a significant market rally.

Neither bull nor bear, Mr. Rhodes, the head of Boston-based Rhodes Analytics, was right on, given Tuesday’s rally. The ingredients are still in place to push stock prices considerably higher, he says. In brief:

o There is a lot of liquidity on the sidelines, with about $1 trillion in money-market mutual funds.

o Many banks have written off the majority of their bad loans.

o There is record short interest, both on the New York Stock Exchange and on Nasdaq. At the NYSE, these shorts make up more than 3% of its capitalization.

In essence, Mr. Rhodes says he thinks that investors are in a position to recoup a healthy chunk of the enormous losses they suffered since last October’s market highs. For example, until a few weeks ago, the stock market, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire Composite Index, the single broadest market measurement, was stripped of about $3.4 trillion of its value as it plummeted more than 20%.

Still, Mr. Rhodes says: “We’re in a dicey period and you want to be hedged.”

Money manager Selwyn Ortz agrees, cautioning investors to heed history: In January of 44 B.C.E, a soothsayer warned Caesar to beware of the Ides of March. Unfortunately, he ignored the warning, and it cost Caesar his life. Mr. Ortz says investors should also be wary of the “Ides of August and September,” as he is expecting a sharp market setback in this period once the brief euphoria runs thin.

Pointing to a flurry of renewed bullish comments following Tuesday’s rally, Mr. Ortz, a principal of Hong Kong-based HK Investments Ltd., says he thinks Wall Street foolishly got carried away with little more than a temporary oil correction.

In fact, HK Investments Ltd. is a buyer of select energy stocks, such as ExxonMobil, Schlumberger, and Transocean.

“The bear market,” Mr. Ortz contends, “is far from over because there are just too many risks out there. Only dreamers believe otherwise.”

dandordan@aol.com