Well, I passed. (YES!) I appreciate all your kind wishes; they worked!

I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to break my pledge about no post until Saturday. I am, if nothing else, consistent.

And I'll use just one graph to make a point - CROX, of all things.

There are two big points I want to make using the above graph as the basis:

ONE - While enjoying the ride up, one must always be cautious about when the music is going to stop playing. I bought CROX at March 26th at $1.2158 and sold it on May 5th for $3.66. Why did I get out? I felt the cluster of trading activity from last year around $4.00 was formidable, and I wanted to make my substantial profits. The stock pushed a little higher, but, as you can see, it's back to $2.52 now.

The point is this: it has been almost impossible to lose money buying stocks over the past two months, but at some point, there's going to be a softening, especially with these high-fliers. Multi-hundred percent gains are great in the span of two months, but at some point profits are going to be taken. So at a minimum it pays to keep your stops very fresh (although a day like today woudln't have saved many CROX owners).

TWO- the most bullish thing this market could get would be a hefty retracement next week. Take a look at OIH, for example. Am I a buyer here? Absolutely not! Would I be a buyer at $90. Yes, yes, yes! Indeed, a chart resembling CROX on quite a few more important issues (like OIH, DBC, and the like) would be astonishingly attractive.

At this point, the market's retracement is on the side of a milk carton. It has gone missing, and no one knows if it'll ever be found again. We are in our ninth straight week of this insanity.

I'll say one other thing - - - the confidence regained by the bulls virtually ensures the retracement will be nothing more than just a retracement. In other words, a buying opportunity. I do not anticipate any Big Kahuna plunge to return for many months. We have to get to a level of conceit and confidence among the bulls equal to what we saw in October 2007. Until then, my plan is (a) cover shorts/sell puts upon the completion of any decent retracement (b) load up on the best-looking long opportunities I can find.

OK, I'm serious this time. I mean it. I'm leaving to take my test. This will be my last post before tomorrow (glancing about furtively). I'll just leave you with this one chart, which I consider bee-yoo-tee-ful. It was a very bright spot in an otherwise semi-yucky day.

As I mentioned early this morning, I am taking my series 65 examination this afternoon, and I probably won't have an opportunity to do a post until early Saturday morning. Thanks for understanding the "light Slope day". Good night!

P.S. Thanks to whoever it was in the comments section that brought GOLD to my attention (the symbol). What a beauty! Going long precious metals today saved my bacon.

OK, I've got time for one last post before the market closes. NZD/USD bears close watching. I have found this to be a very interesting way to look for extremes in US equities, and it's really pushing the envelope right now.

With the market up in the triple digits (and why not? our banks are healthy!) I figured I would be getting mauled. But as I kept glancing at the sum total of my portfolio, I was down, but not by that much.

How come? At first I thought all the stupid stocks in my IRA were saving the day, but they really weren't up that much. Then I looked at my options screen (I have 43 put options) and expected to see a solid wall of red. Instead, there actually was a fair bit of green, and a few of them were doing pretty well on a day like this.

To any of us, the most important "indicator" is our own bottom line. It looks like, even today, some of the more bearish patterns are actually still managing to act that way. Like one of my oft-mentioned favorites.

Anyway, I really have to study, so I probably won't be doing another post until a one-sentence comment cleaner after the close. Thanks for understanding.

I have 28 long positions in my IRA, and although I view most of them with deep skepticism, there are a handful I actually consider "keepers." Here they are:

Well, the event in my life which will impact Slope today (it's not a body part) is the Series 65 examination. I'm taking it shortly after the close.

I've been studying for it with this absolutely dreadful book. The author seems to think he's terribly funny (in a knee-slapping, yuk-yuk kind of way), and I can't imagine any style more grating or distracting for a subject like this. Strangely, it's just about the only book on the topic. My dislike for the author's style was amplified by the fact that he suggests technical analysts are "fools." If somehow I manage to pass this test, I'm recycling this bad boy, pronto.

So the bottom line is that I'm going to disappear after the close for a long time; it won't matter quite as much, since you good people aren't quite the chatty Cathys you are on non-Fridays. But you've been warned.

As for the week as a whole, it looks like most indexes are going to put a 9th nail into their hoped-for bearish coffin. The $NDX might well be the exception.

The constitution of my portfolio (except for, sigh, the heroic and increasingly-irksome IRA) is tilted quite bearish, but the size of the portfolio is very muted. I don't have any honkin' big positions. The last nine weeks have taught me to really keep the risk tame, and until we've got an honest-to-God break (not a "gee this looks like it could break"), I'll continue to stay mild instead of wild.