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Alright guys and gals, I'm getting a late start with today's newsletter, so we'll keep it short and sweet. What's the cliche? "Just stick to the facts?" That's what we'll do here ... just stick to the facts, starting with a housing fact that wasn't a surprise at all.

Yes, It Was a Huge Week for Real Estate

Yesterday we told you we got not one but two pieces of encouraging information on the housing front. One of them was, the Case-Shiller Index for July said the average home price in 20 major cities was up 12.4% on a year-over-year basis. The other one was that the FHFA reported a similar 8% improvement in home prices with July's numbers now being tallied.

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Happy Tuesday, fellow traders.

We mentioned this to you yesterday, but it bears repeating today - we can't jump to any conclusions based on Tuesday's action any more than we could have jumped to bearish conclusions based on last Friday's tumble (nor any more than we could have jumped to bullish conclusions following the Fed's "no taper after all" rally). The market's getting bumped around here like a tumbleweed, just drifting in the direction of that day's wind. In our case the wind is the media's rhetoric, which wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact that the media's take on things has been constantly changing recently.

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Hmmmm. Not exactly a rousing follow-through on yesterday's post-Fed party. But, I can't say I'm surprised. Like we told you in yesterday's newsletter, there was something a little odd about how exaggerated the bullish reaction was when we learned the Federal Reserve wasn't going to taper its QE efforts anytime soon. Today it's almost as if Wednesday's news was completely irrelevant (and maybe it was irrelevant).

Or maybe Wednesday's rally was just the proverbial last hurrah we described to you yesterday. It's still a little too soon to say for sure. I like to see confirmations of reversals before I get on board, and today's action didn't confirm anything - the dust was still settling from Wednesday's surge over the course of Thursday's trading. As overbought as stocks still are right now, however, that vulnerability is certainly on the table.

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Happy Wednesday, ladies and gents, and what a Wednesday it was. While there were other things going on, pretty much all eyes and ears were on Ben Bernanke, waiting for a glimmer of clarity regarding his plans to taper off the Fed's QE efforts. We'll take a look at some of that other stuff, but don't worry - I'm aware that what you want to hear the most about is today's news from the Federal Reserve and how it's going to affect the market. [Spoiler alert: Good news doesn't always lead to logical results.]

Housing Starts & Permits Getting Sluggish

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We hope everybody's Tuesday is going well so far. The bulls certainly got back to work during Tuesday's trading session, extending what's now become a freakishly-long winning streak and pushing the S&P 500 right up to the brink of record highs. Any chance we'll actually break through the nearby ceilings and keep on trucking? Ya know, I may have been a doubter a few days ago, but given what we've seen take shape the last few days, it wouldn't be crazy to entertain the idea.

We'll look at those details in a second. First, we've got just a couple of quick notes on the economy we didn't get to look at on Monday... last month's capacity utilization and its corresponding industrial production data, for one, but also a look the inflation rate as of the end of August.