First off, a number of people have written to me wondering about the survey that shall not be named (the one about the technical analysis-based hedge fund). Rest assured I did get your responses (and I was really surprised at the magnitude of the response) and, for those folks that are ostensibly accredited and have a strong enough interest, I'll be in touch with you in all likelihood during the summer months.

Second, for a while I've been wanting to show the following clip. It is my impression of what a blogger's last day would be like (I've got one in particular in mind). I had always remembered this scene from Forrest Gump, but it was nowhere on the web, so I bought the DVD and took this little clip myself. See, I'm always thinking of you guys!

It's pretty evident that Slopers feel the same way about the market these days as I do, in spite of the reprieve in the last hour today.

 In keeping with the Oprah motif, my "big beef" with the market is the lack of a theme. To me, a good theme is a general philosophy you can buy into and stick with for a period of weeks or months, such as......

• "Commodities overall are going to go up";
  
• "Technology stocks are going to fall";
• "Anything to do with precious metals is going to be in a major bull market";
• "Casual dining stocks are going to get killed";
  
• "Battered name-brands that are less than $3 are going to rebound strongly"

That last theme is the only one that has materialized, and I've stuck with it to good success. But even that one is running out of steam, since my IRA stocks are not rising effortlessly like they used to.

We have themes that last a few hours these days, but nothing truly lasting. The result is that it makes trading (1) a huge amount of work; for (2) at best, small profits (if not outsized losses for all your trouble).

If nothing else, I am opinionated, so I will offer this, which I truly do believe: if the highs from May 7/8 aren't taken out this week, I think the bulls are in for a meaningful correction; if we do get new highs this week, I think the bulls could carry the S&P back into the quadruple-digits with virtually no pause. If today's rally had held together, it would be extremely good for the bulls (which is why, God forgive me, I put up my TWM--->UWM post). But it didn't hold together.

So we remain in a state of uncertainty. Time to get my massage oil ready.

I have repurposed this post - - originally it was a "throw the hands in the air and buy UWM" topic, but I've decided otherwise. I am no longer in TWM, but I'm not in UWM either. This market is making me uncharacteristically capricious.

Let me show one chart that has acted nicely and behaved to technical normalcy - - SLX.

Well-behaved charts like this are getting to be few and far between, unfortunately. But you take what you can get.

Here are all my stops for my IRA positions. They are alphabetically backwards because my brokerage really, really sucks.

I saw someone made a cutesy comment about "get out the dartboard again" with respect to SRS. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Did people think it was just going to explode higher? I pointed out a trend change (see green circle) which is still very much intact. If we break to new lows, sure, SRS gets thrown into the toilet again, but for now, I see a security which is trying to form a base.

To paraphrase......

A trader must have the deepest commitment. The most serious mind. This one a long time I have watched. All his life has he looked away to the future....to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, hmph? What he was doing, hmph? Adventure - heh! Excitement - heh! A trader craves not these things.

"I'm not afraid."

"You will be. You will be."

.......and something tells me Disqus is having trouble again. Kim! Help us!