Well, that was a fairly lethargic start to the trading week. Though stocks certainly could have fared worse, they also could have fared better. I suspect traders are still mostly stuck on the fence, unsure as to the market's true undertow. Rather than take a swing in either direction, they were content to simply sit on their hands. Volume was quite light today too, underscoring the theory. You know what though? While the market as a whole wasn't impressive on Monday, we had a couple of stock picks make some surprisingly big gains. Let's just show you where we are with those first, since we want to raise our stop levels on them. We'll take care of the marketwide stuff in a moment. Astec, Silicon Image Take Flight I'll be the first to acknowledge I think they're both overbought and due for at least a small pullback. But, you still have to love how well our trades on Astec Industries (ASTE) and Silicon Image (SIMG) did today. Shares of the latter were up about 4% as of print-time on Monday, and shares of the former were up nearly 6%. Almost needless to say, this gives us a lot of wiggle room on both picks... more than enough to raise our mental stop levels to protect the unrealized gains we've reaped so far. Let's dissect Silicon Image first. With our theoretical trade up about 19% since our February 7th entry, let's raise our mental stop-loss to $6.19. That was where the stock topped out a couple of times as February was turning into March. Since former ceilings have a way of becoming floors, we have to give the stock that much of a berth. Hopefully we won't have to use all of that berth, but it's there if we need it. And, I'm guessing we'll at least need some wiggle room after today's opening gap starts to weigh on investors' minds... or maybe not. If you're looking for a reason why SIMG soared today, don't bother, because there's not any - at least not today. About the only thing that we could connect to today's and last week's strength is the announcement that the company was going to attend investor conferences today and Wednesday. Such conferences tend to draw bullish attention to a company, however, so don't be surprised if we get a few more days' worth of traction from that publicity. Eventually though, we're going to have to do something about today's gap (unless we've locked in our gains by the time the stock has to pay the piper). As for Astec Industries, boy that thing was a rocket today. It left behind an opening gap as well, and is probably more vulnerable to a pullback here than Silicon Image is. There was at least a reason for the big jump from, ASTE, however. The company was upgraded from "neutral" to "outperform" by Robert W. Baird today. While I'm not surprised that the stock took off like it did after breaking out of the wedge pattern we were talking about a couple of weeks ago [the professional analysts like Baird and others also look at a chart to time their upgrades], I really wish there was some better pacing with Astec. The stock's worth more than $44.00, but if more than half the market is terrified to buy it while it's this overbought, it may as well be worth $100 per share. I'm not going to complain, though. We're up about 13% on the trade now. We just need to raise our mental stop on ASTE to $40.40. The only name we really had a problem with today was Frontier Communications (FTR). Which was off by nearly 4% at one point before making a partial recovery. Gotta be honest though... I'm not really worried about it. Yeah, it was as sharp plunge, but a key long-term moving average line - the 100-day moving average line - only had to be brushed before the bulls went back into buying mode again. Between that and the sheer excessive size of the dip, I'm willing to bet FTR shares bounce back into their bigger bullish trend tomorrow, or by Wednesday at the latest. By the way, there wasn't any news about Frontier Communications that would have sparked Monday's pullback. It just looks like someone decided today was a good day to bank some profits. This is where we are as of near the close today. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it's not too bad. Of our seven open trades, we're up on five of them, and up BIG-time on two of those five. The other two trades are very small losses (less than 2%), and both of those trades are still looking like they've got more upside in their future. All in all, there's nothing to complain about.... until you look at the portfolio the guys over at the Elite Opportunity are managing for their subscribers. As they say, read 'em and weep (tickers and company names withheld, as always). And yes, those results ARE pretty typical of the kinds of gains that SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity subscribers are getting on a regular basis. I'm not going to belabor the point - if you want a shot at the more-than-occasional whale-sized winner, the SCN EO service is your best shot. On the other end of that continuum is the "if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting" mindset. Use the newsletter's free two-week trial and see just how potent your portfolio can become. Here's how to get it , or cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEO/v1/ Still on Hold, But.... You know, as much as I'd like to say something whiz-bang about the market here, the fact of the matter is we just went through our fourth day of stagnation. I am pretty impressed about the way the market pushed off of its lows today, however, and I have to wonder if today's slight dip was enough of a "reset" to let the bulls get chugging again. Don't rule it out. Take a look. In support of that argument is the way the VIX kissed its upper Bollinger band and then peeled back. I don't know if that was enough of a pop for the VIX to slough off any of the market's overbought condition, but it should have bought us at least a little time. Honestly though, today's not the day to be making any decisions. Like we mentioned to you above, today's was a very low volume day (which you can see on the chart), which means most traders were on the sidelines... waiting for someone else to make their move. We'll wait there too. By the way, try and keep some powder dry the next few days. We may have a couple new ideas for you this week.