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Well ladies and gents, we just logged day eight of the government shutdown, and though society as we know it has yet to crumble, it is becoming clear the market's growing weary of the mess.

I have to believe the investing public innately knows the shutdown itself doesn't really have a big or permanent economic impact, and I'm sure our politicians are smart enough to not do any serious damage to the country (the kind that might keep them from being re-elected). But, I'm also pretty certain most traders know what's going on in Washington could still end up being a sizeable short-term drag on stocks, and they just don't want to ride it out. That's why the bears tested the deeper selling waters today, stopping just short of going over the edge of a cliff after a pretty good drubbing.

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Happy Friday folks! I've said it before but I'll say it again ... even the worst Friday is better than the best Monday, right? And as it turns out, this particular Friday was a pretty good one. Stocks made their way higher, largely ignoring the now-four-days-old government shutdown. I still sense some hesitation from traders to really plow into the market in a huge way, but it's encouraging that investors aren't freaking out about the shutdown (at least not yet). In fact, several stocks almost seem to be thriving in this lackluster environment, and the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity team got their hands on more than a few of them.

See the chart immediately to your right? I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you it's one of the recent picks suggested by the SCN EO. Granted, we've seen fakeout surges from this stock before, but there's something different about the current rally - it's unfurling on huge volume, which wasn't something we saw the last couple of times this stock popped. There's a very good possibility this move could be "the one" that really gets things going. There's just an awful lot of new buying interest that wasn't there before.

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Well, that wasn't a lot of fun. Although it looked like investors were willing to overlook the government shutdown when it first started on Tuesday, traders changed their mind today. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that President Obama said in an interview after the closing bell rang yesterday "this time I think Wall Street should be concerned." Simply responding to his directions, Wall Street got concerned, and stocks tanked as a result (proving that sometimes, the best thing to say is nothing).

So now what? Well, if you've been reading the newsletter for at least a few days then you already know we've actually been hoping for a decent pullback to burn off the market's rather severe overbought condition. Could today's dip be the beginning of that much-needed move? Maybe, but once again the market's volatility was so extreme that it set up a lot of possible moves from where it left off on Thursday. Geez.

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Day two of the government shutdown is now in the books, and it looks like we'll at least get a third day of the same, judging from the way things are going (or not going) in Washington. Though the bulls didn't follow through on yesterday's rally, it's not like stocks were hammered due to another day of shuttered government doors. Mostly it looks like traders don't really care about the shutdown either way, which - to put it bluntly - is the way it should be. There's no real empirical evidence that these shutdowns adversely impact the economy, so investors have decided to proceed as if it's not even happening.

Be that as it may, though volume was light again on Wednesday and stocks haven't really gone anywhere (on a net basis) since Friday, there's something of a red flag waving in the background I don't think we can afford to ignore.

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Welcome back, fellow traders. We hope you had a great weekend, though if any of you were expecting our leaders in Washington D.C. to come to their senses by yesterday and agree on a way to avoid a government shutdown, you woke up to disappointing news this morning. You know what though? The House, Senate, and President have until midnight tonight to come to some sort of agreement and sidestep a frozen budget, so it's possible things will have changed by the time you actually read this.

That being said, I was thinking about this whole mess (and studying prior shutdowns) this past weekend, and having had some time to think about it, not only do I have a little less faith we'll be able to avoid the shutdown, I'm starting to think a shutdown might end up being a good thing for investors.