It's a rodeo market-if you can stay on the bull more than eight seconds, you win. Rodeo bulls are experienced, tricky animals that twist, jump and drop in explosive ways to unseat their riders as quickly as possible. Sound familiar? Beginning bull markets do the same thing, chasing everyone to the sidelines before they start their big up-move.

Bear markets, in contrast, are like a lazy summer day by a sweet-smelling river, lulling everyone to sleep just before the flash flood comes roaring down to wipe everything out before anyone can get to high ground. A market this frustrating and dangerous almost has to resolve to the upside.

Falling oil prices should continue to help, especially if issues in the Middle East continue to sort themselves out.

But the market doesn't care what I think and predict, so let's check in with the S&P 500 to see what it is telling us. On March 17, right on the expected turn date, the S&P spiked down to an intraday low at 1257, before recovering and heading up for two months to 1440. From that energy level, which I identified to my subscribers well in advance, the S&P slid all the way down to a spike low of 1200 on July 15, with a close at 1215. While this was an undercut of the March 17 low due to the extraordinary amount of bad news in the financial sector that day, in retrospect it was a double bottom. Since then we have seen a successful test on July 28 that found buyers at 1234, followed by a steady march up to Wednesday's close at 1289. Then Thursday developed into another bronco ride back down to successfully test the 1260 level from above.

While there is a lot of energy stored up to move this market higher this week--further indicated by Friday's 300 point upswing--the next couple of days are likely to show a necessary short-term consolidation. I think we will break through the 50 day moving average at 1302 this week, as our old friend 1326, a key attractor/repeller level going either up or down, pulls the market up. If there's as much energy available as I think, after a bit of consolidation around 1326 we should see the S&P climb above its 200-day moving average at 1377 and move pretty quickly back to the 1440 level than stopped it on May 19. From there, we will find out if the next stop is new highs and a possible parabolic leg up, or a very serious leg down in an ongoing bear market.

We'll have to wait and see...Until next time, take care!