You may find this hard to believe, but when I was in college, I had aspirations of becoming a professional stock analyst. I had a strong interest in stocks, and the little bit I knew about analysts suggested to me they (a) were highly paid; (b) were very intelligent; (c) got to apply rigorous criteria to the universe of stocks to carefully select a handful of winners.

Little did I realize that analysts are little more than shills for the investment bank division; paid lackeys to puff up virtually all stocks so that more services could be sold to them. I also fell in love with technical analysis in my late teens, and that was enough to dissuade me from fundamental analysis, which these folks purportedly use as the basis for their decisions.

When I saw CROX got zapped on Friday, I didn't even have to look at the historical recommendations of the analysts – – I already knew what I would see. Something like this:

Buy, buy, buy. The world is full of bulls, and it's also full of analysts to prop up their hopes. What a bunch of crap.

So if we look at any given rating vis a vis the chart, particularly when the stock gets wiped out and they change their rating, it resembles this:

Gosh, D.A. Davidson. I guess you mean the really long run.

And don't assume these geniuses only screw up in the eyes of bears. They can be just as inept the other direction.

So you wanna know a secret? I don't want to do what they do for a living.

And so ends my week at Stanford Sierra Camp – a week in which your host:

• Stared down a wild black bear at fifteen feet (seriously!)
• Water skied for the first time in his life (cruising along Fallen Leaf Lake for over 30 seconds…..)
• Shot an egg – yes, an egg – with a bow & arrow at a distance of 40 feet.

It's been a great trading week, and even though I worked for most of this "vacation", I've enjoyed it tremendously.

I'm not sure if I'll do a post before Monday, since I've buried you guys with ideas all week long, but perhaps I will. In any event, enjoy the weekend, and thanks for a great week of terrific commentary!

Here are a few charts I pulled in the wee hours of the morning for you to ponder.

And the one I suggested on July 8th – – when it was $45! – –

I have, since 6:30 a.m., been cutting back on positions and taking profits.

I get a lot of emails from readers with all kinds of opinions. Many of them are very well constructed, and many of them contradict one another. Added to this, I read a handful of sites that I respect. There really is no consensus at all right now.

Generally speaking, what I tend to agree with these days is that we're going to head into a "C" wave upward to as high as 1325 or so on the S&P. At that point, all hell is going to break loose to the downside. (Many have tried to talk me out of Elliott Wave, but I'm still a believer). So I'm positioning myself for that, which means I'm taking profits wherever I think there's a risk for a bounce, and I'm tightening up my stops everywhere else.

So I'm sitting on an increasingly large amount of cash, and there's definitely a part of me that would like to see the S&P get strong and make its way higher.