Grinding the Gears

I appreciate everyone's patience while I got my entry done for the day. I went on a whirlwind adventure to Florida to speak (five times) at an investment conference.

Many people were asking me about my book. You can buy it from Amazon right now, and I imagine it will be in your local bookstore within a few weeks. I see it's zoomed from #400,000 to #3,800 in just a couple of days. Harry Potter, look out!

I was really disappointed in the market on Tuesday (yesterday). It started with a quick drop, and then it punched and clawed its way back up to another lifetime high on the Dow.

The bulls are ungodly powerful right now. The reason is simple. This entire basis for people buying into this market is no different than the reason any six year old offers for doing anything..........."everyone else is doing it!" And that kind of sheeplike behavior has been creating graphs like that of the Dow Composite, which is straight up, grinding higher, and higher, and higher, annihilating us poor bears the entire way......


The Dow, which fell nearly 50 points today, continues to offer a flicker of hope for the ursine among us.


The S&P 100 likewise shows a continued reduction in upward momentum as viewed via the RSI.


Today I'd like to offer a mix of both short and long suggestions. As always, check them out more deeply for yourself. Let's start with the shorts. BP, mentioned here a couple of times, pushes closer and closer to breaking its huge head and shoulders pattern.


Carnival, also a repeated mention, looks better too.


CNX is another short energy play, in spite of recent strength in the OIH.


EXC seems to have clearly broken its upward trendline.


Now let's break tradition and pull up some bullish ideas. The balance of today's post is bullish suggestions. Starting with Genentech (DNA), where I've highlighted some similar patterns in the past and their subsequent upward breakouts.


FedEx, moving on to new highs.


HOLX also looks good, and has strong volume backing up its breakout.


IPS is also good for aggressive bulls.


The trouble I am having with conjuring up bullish ideas is that it's tough finding safe bullish patterns in a market this high. I could point out plenty of momentum plays, but I'm not really into taking advantage of the Greater Fool theory.

Good night, and I'll see you after the close Thursday.