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Good Monday to you. We've got quite a bit of exciting news to talk about today, so let's get right into it. We'll go from least important to most important. Then again, maybe some of you might disagree in the order here depending on how you acted on certain ideas we brought you over the last while. On Friday, we finished up our edition with some fun speculation outside of the market with horse racing and the NFL in light of the horrible week the Northeast had with Hurricane Sandy. It was our modest effort to put a smile on some faces of those who spent the week bailing out water, and probably dealing with a tremendous amount of damage repair. We truly hope things are getting better for those affected by last week's massive destruction by Mother Nature.

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Good Friday to you. The markets received some decent news again this morning confirming a slight improvement on the jobs front, but as we said yesterday, although the media continues to point to jobs as the catalyst for yesterday's rally, the reality is the markets don't really care about those numbers. First, it's not enough of an improvement to really provide a significant catalyst, and secondly, it's about the technicals right now. The charts were in a position to move stocks higher and they did. Today, the markets gapped slightly and have sold off since the open with most indexes trying to find an intraday base as I type.

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There you go. The indexes are moving sharply higher today on news unemployment is trending slightly lower. With a drop in new claims and payrolls processor, Automatic Data Processing (ADP), reporting private employers added 158,000 workers last month, that makes for the biggest increase of new jobs since February. Yes, that's good news and we'll take it, but that's not why we think the markets are moving today. That's just what the media is saying. We said on Tuesday and reiterated yesterday the markets were finally at levels that should support a nice tradable relief rally at the very least. We suggested 1395 on the S&P 500 as the perfect entry, and only missed pegging the absolute bottom by a mere six points. Not bad, and no, we're not perfect.

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So far this morning, everything has played out exactly as our commentary suggested yesterday. The indexes oddly gapped up for no apparent reason on the open and have continued to sell off as I type. We mentioned yesterday the S&P 500 appears headed for 1395, which would represent the complete 3/8 retracement from its rally that started back in June. After being closed for the last couple of days, the markets have had an opportunity to digest both the positive and negative economic impact of Hurricane Sandy.

Yes, that sounds contradicting, however, depending on the sector, there's obviously going to be fallout and bright spots in terms of an improved fourth quarter. The markets seem to be calling it a wash as a whole right now, which is exactly what we predicted. Of course the media is loving the opportunity to embellish this traumatic event so many families who have unfortunately been victimized from, but the stock market is all about business and financial outlook.

Right now, there's an awful lot of trading speculation surrounding many of the names which stand to either benefit or be negatively affected by Sandy. What we find extremely interesting right now is the names you would think should be selling off are actually holding up pretty well. Take the airlines' sector, for example. I've included a chart of the ^XAL, which is the bellwether index for everything airlines. It's done pretty much nothing today. Then again, although airline stocks tend to get a lot of media attention in times like this, it's pretty much a dead trade, a dead investment and bottom line, dead money. Why don't they just nationalize the airlines industry like the rest of public transportation? All they do is suck money out of the private sector and lose it. Guess that was a bit of a rant.

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Hope you're having a better week so far than many of our friends, neighbors and colleagues to the Northeast. Our hearts and prayers go out to all of those feeling the negative impact of Hurricane Sandy's ruthless behavior over the last few days. Mother Nature has a way of bringing everyone together though, so it's nice to see the rest of America supporting our fellow brothers and sisters in time of need. I'm sure we'll start hearing more and more about all of the individual heroic efforts and selfless acts of kindness that not only took place in the face of Hurricane Sandy, but also with the rebuilding and repair efforts that are going to take place in the weeks and months ahead.

If you're wondering if you missed anything yesterday, we didn't publish a newsletter edition for obvious reasons, however, we thought we'd provide our two cents on how this market is going to react to all of this, as well as how it's going to affect certain sectors, both in the short and long run. There's three things most important to remember assuming the markets open for trading tomorrow, or whenever they do open.

First, let's remember the markets are extremely efficient, so let that be the first premise for today's edition. If you've been around the markets for a good while, then you know natural disasters, unforeseen circumstances, significant isolated events and corporate hiccups are all a part of the market's everyday life. The key to being opportunistic though, is to know first that the markets are much more efficient than most investors are ever going to give them credit for, unless we're referring to the mortgage credit debacle of a few years ago of course. Yes, I had to throw that in there.