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Are we all ready for a great weekend? Whether you're a horse racing fan or you just like sunshine, the next couple of days should be good ones for most everyone. Of course, another bullish week for stocks is helping get the weekend started on the right foot, particularly if you've been trading along with the SCN's stock picks. All four were up quite nicely today, outperforming the S&P 500's impressive rally.

We're going to take a look our portfolio as well as the broad market's momentum (and outlook) in a second. But, the first thing we want to get out of the way is a closer look at last month's employment data that was unveiled today. The spin from the headlines was pretty positive, but you guys know how I feel about the initial gloss-overs we tend to get from the media - the rest of the story doesn't always jive with the knee-jerk reaction.

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Never let it be said the stock market isn't interesting, and occasionally surprising.

You likely already know stocks rallied on Thursday, so we're not going to belabor the point. You also likely know the reason for the rally.... the European Central Bank announced a package of pretty big changes designed to jolt the continent's economy back into action. What's surprising is, while investors responded with the expected celebratory buying, not everything that should have happened in the wake of the ECBs news actually did happen. It looks like there are pockets of doubt about how successful the whole thing's going to be.

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In yesterday's newsletter we promised to take a look at our open picks and even talk about some potential new ones. True to our word, we'll do so today. We're not going to officially be adding any new names to the portfolio today, however, for a very good reason - the market's showing real signs of fatigue, and odds are good any marketwide pullback is going to drag most stocks down with it.

We'll talk about our bigger-picture concerns in a moment when we take our technical look at the broad market. Let's go ahead and take care of the stock-picking business first, starting with the three names we're going to begin watching closely as potential trades.

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Hello, fellow traders, and welcome back to the trading week. We hope you all had a great weekend. It's time to get back to business though, so let's just dig in, starting with a look at the broad market.

Just to recap where we left off at the end of last week, (1) the market had some momentum after breaking past resistance and plowing into new-high territory, but (2) this isn't an environment where momentum has lasted long. Rather, we've been more apt to reverse - in either direction - sustaining the zig-zag action we've seen since March. Things didn't change today; the weight of the big gain early last week is proving to be a drag now.

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And so ends another trading day, another trading week, and another trading month. Despite the calendar saying things aren't supposed to be this way right now, we just logged our second consecutive week of sizeable gains. All told, the S&P 500 advanced about 1.8% in May... much better than the average 0.1% gain we normally see for this month.

One has to wonder if the odd bullishness we saw in May of 2014 is a hint that we're in for an unusually bullish spring and summer this year, or if it's all something of a setup for a pullback. Our forecast is still - mostly - for a flat to bearish period for stocks over the next few weeks, for a couple of reasons.