I keep reading about how the bear market is over. My question is......WHAT bear market? Sure, there were times I thought we were actually getting into one, but the longest recent consistent stretch of a downturn began October 11, 2007 and ended January 22, 2008. About 70 trading days. Here it is, in all its glory......

Whoop-de-freakin'-do. That's the big, bad bear market people are relieved to have survived? Give me a break. The bull market barely missed a beat.

The uber-bull market, of course, is anything and everything to do with energy. OIH reached yet another lifetime high today, and I've come to the conclusion that in a market like this, the only way to make profits is to simply keep buying the stocks making new highs.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't do this. I don't even think I can. And shame on me for not having the gumption, guts, or gonads to do so. But momentum stocks just aren't my style. But there's no doubt that this is where the cash is being made.

Finding new highs in ProphetCharts is simple enough. Just turn on the Chart Toppers module, and voila, there they are - - updated and live, every day.

There are dozens of charts that have exploded hundreds of percent higher over the past few years. Many of them are related to agriculture or energy. Here are just a few. It's easy with hindsight to drink in the wonderfulness of these charts. But doing it in real time is pretty tough.....

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Does one simply dive into these stocks? Some do. And they have, by and large, profited handsomely from doing so. The difficulty is figuring out when the music is going to stop playing. Was today the top for these stocks? Or is the top several years and many hundreds of percent away?

There are some stocks which are strong but have at least emerged from plausible breakout formations. It would easier for me to buy into one of these than one of the hockey sticks shown above. Here is a sampling......

The mistake I made - - - and over the past couple of months, I've made a boatload of them - - is assuming that the normal rules of the road apply. Just take a look at the chart of XLE below, for instance. A chartist might assume that the ascending trendline, drawn over the course of many years, would be a substantial level of resistance. But look what happened today.......blam! The line no longer has meaning, because prices are so exceptionally strong that they powered past it.

I have trimmed my positions way, way down and am preserving cash. I am extremely uncomfortable trading in a market like this. The markets in the first quarter of this year fit me like a glove. Lately it's been agonizingly awkward. The quality of this blog has suffered because of it, and for that I am sorry. But, unfortunately, I'm the author of this thing, so just like this little corner of the web benefits when the stars are lined up with my thinking, it suffers when they're not. That's just the way it is.........in spite of another sad-sack post, I wish you all an enjoyable and relaxing weekend.

I know this is sacrilege, but it strikes me as verrrrrry unlikely that a stock that looks like this is destined to make new highs.

Looking closer, it seems the slow stochastic and RSI are both rolling over. I can't remember the last time I had a position on AAPL, but I'm buying puts here.

OK, I am replacing the snowman picture with one that is more interesting.

At the open, the IWM had a breakout above its Fibonacci level, but the breakout lasted 60 seconds or so. It's only 45 minutes into the trading day, but so far it looks like the potential for a failed breakout.

Hope springs eternal in the bearish breast, eh?

It's hard to remember a time that I felt so disenchanted with the market. I enjoy charting, and I enjoy trading, but when the world seems turned upside down like it is, the whole affair loses its charm. Oil goes up? The market goes up. Oil goes down? The market goes up even more.

Of course, there's a lot more to the market than just oil. But the notion that there never was any recession, and that the so-called bear market had its entire run in the span of a few months, is becoming nauseating possible to believe.  I never thought the government could bail out a market, but maybe it managed to do so. Or at least delay the day of reckoning.

When the IWM opened this morning, it was weaker, and it looked like it might be a nice down day. But it gathered strength soon after the open, and it never looked back. It didn't push past the Fibonacci retracement you see here, but it got awfully close.

Other major ETFs, though, like the QQQQ and SPY, blew right through their highs set earlier this week. The moment this line was crossed, you could see all the shorts diving for cover.

OIH is maddening. The yellow tinted areas show what had become daily swoons, but this thing just keeps powering higher. Most insane of all, crude oil (the commodity itself) actually got walloped today, but OIH blasted sky-high.

Here's the aforementioned crude oil price. This is the heftiest bearish engulfing pattern this market has seen in a while.

The $VIX now stands at less than half its level back in March. Are we going to return to the single digits? It's amazing how swiftly - - and consistently - - people are diving right back into this market.

If we back up to a daily chart on the S&P, we can see (for the bears) this very troubling fact: the market was range-bound until a few weeks ago. It pushed its way above the retracement line. It sank back down to touch it perfectly. And it resumed moving higher (to a new high price since the mini-bear market took place). It is seeming increasingly unlikely that we're going to break below the critical 1,383 level. Even with all this overhead supply, the market may simply climb the "wall of worry", slowly but surely.

And the Transports are even "worse." This index is only one good day away from a new lifetime high.

You can tell from my tone I'm feeling pretty miserable about the market. I can deal with markets, be they up or down, as long as they make some kind of sense to me. This one doesn't. So it's discouraging for someone who wants to analyze price action to be faced with what appear to me to be baffling contradictions. So I'm sorry I don't have anything more inspiring to say. See you Friday evening.

Until the markets get enjoyable (e.g. bearish) again, I'll be returning to my "one post a day" format after the close. A lot of folks have become accustomed to my frequent intraday posts, and I'll do that again if sanity returns, but until then, it's back to the old routine. See you later today.........

Well, here's a "to-the-penny!", but kind of a sickening one. I've drawn a retracement between the two Fibonaccis that establish the extreme range between last July (when the fun began) and this March (when the fun ended). Interestingly, today's IWM precisely touched the 50% mark. I'm sort of losing hope that it'll mean anything. But, FWIW.........

The volume is MINUSCULE today, in spite of the *%^#(*#)*)%(# huge rally.

This morning's CPI number gave the bulls a sigh of relief, and the markets opened solidly higher. As of this writing (only 20 minutes into the open), the IWM has solidly closed the gap it created back on January 4th. By the time you read this, it may have soared past that horizontal resistance line. The Dow is already up into the triple digits. Fun, fun, fun.

By contrast, gold and (more so...) oil are weaker as of this moment. I guess the feeling that's starting to spread is that if oil falls, that will be a great catalyst for equities to explode higher. In other words, expensive oil is the only thing holding them back. I am thus highly concentrated in oil-related shorts and avoiding index plays.

I'm on the plane leaving Las Vegas as I'm typing this. I wanted to make a little time for today's post instead of waiting for tonight.

Trading has been not-so-fun for weeks now. I am not just talking about the market going up. I'm speaking more to the fact how it was much better behaved from a technical standpoint during the first three months of the year. I really enjoyed my "to-the-penny!" declarations from months of yore.

The plane is going to take off any minute, so I'm just going to throw in a bunch of charts I find interesting. They pretty much speak for themselves. I'm sorry I don't have time for commentary.

I'll be back in the morning with more time on my hands. Thank you for swinging by!

Welcome to the first public sneak peek of the Slope of Hope on its new platform. Although there are bound to be plenty of rough edges, I look forward to your feedback.

Besides the goodies located on the right column, one of the nice features about this new blog system is the ability to see 'before' and 'after' charts. That way, when you look at older blog entries, you can see how charts have done since the original posting.

For instance, let's say I was writing positively about Mosaic (MOS). The chart would look like it does below as of the writing. But if, much later, you were looking at it, you could click on Present to see how it looks with all the up-to-date prices, and since this was a bullish idea, the area shaded in green would indicate what the chart looked like when I first wrote about it. Try it!

By the same token, a bearish suggestion (such as NutriSystem, symbol NTRI) made last year would look like the chart below, but now that several months have gone by, clicking the Present tab would update that chart and show the original area in pink.

The remainder of the charts are some of my current favorite shorts. Clicking the Present button won't really make any difference (unless you are reading this well past February 2008!) since these are new or at least very recent ideas. So here we go.......

Akamai (AKAM) did a nice break and retracement already, and there are actually two horizontal lines at play here. I've got a nice tight stop on this one, and a break beneath that lower horizontal line would be sensational.

Readers already know of my love for ATI. This has pushed up against its former support (now resistance) level, represented by the horizontal line. This is probably one of my favorite patterns right now.

Dryships (DRYS) is more speculative. I've drawn the Fibonacci retracements, and it already did a massive bounce from about $50 to $90. If this was truly a retracement, we could ride this all the way down to $35 or so, the next level lower.

Genco (GNK) is, like DRYS, also somewhat speculative, but there's a lot of potential "juice" in these puts, because intrinsic value gains or 10, 20, or 30 points are possible.

A much larger and more conservative stock, HPQ, had great earnings recently which caused a nice bounce. This, to me, was a super entry point, because it made it almost the entire way back to its major broken trendline. So we have two resistance levels working in our favor, represented by the broken trendline as well as the horizontal line.

I've been very bearish on the Dow Transports, but I haven't found a good way to short the index itself. Ryder Systems is a play based on my bearishness there.

Walt Disney (DIS) has been sporting a terrific cascading series of lower lows and lower highs, and I entered a put position in the $33 area during its most recent bounce.

I've got a lot of energy puts. Apache (APA) is one of my favorites based on its high price and clean stop.

Long term chartists could make a plausible argument for ACI being in a very bullish pattern. If it breaks above the horizontal line, I agree with them. But if it fails this breakout, as I'm betting it will, my puts will prosper.

Lastly, Canadian Natural (CFQ) has broken a major trendline and may be finishing up a complex head and shoulders pattern.

My main purpose in this entry is for you to get a sneak peek of the new blog. Please add something to the Comments section with any feedback, and if you feel particularly strongly about something, drop me an email. Thanks for taking the time to stop by!