Welcome back everybody. It's always tough to hit the ground running after a long weekend, isn't it? And, with the school year effectively over for almost everyone, the unofficial beginning of summer is here, making it doubly tough to get focused on stocks. Fortunately for all of us, the market is rarely short of things to talk about. Today's no exception. Two things stuck out like sore (though bullish) thumbs today; you probably saw them both. One of them is the fact that the Conference Board's consumer confidence measure hit a five year high in May. The other was how home prices swelled last month more than they had in any other month for the past seven years. I'm not surprised about the latter - for months we've been saying housing is legitimately on the mend. As for the former though, color me surprised. It's surprising because consumer confidence is usually a barometer for recent headlines, and the headlines for the better part of May weren't really all that compelling other than chatter about the rising market. I wouldn't call the headlines disastrous, but I wouldn't call them great either. Yet, there it is - a consumer confidence score of 76.2.... the best reading since February of 2008, before things really came unraveled. Theoretically a rise in consumer confidence is bullish. In this case though, I have to wonder what consumers are seeing. It's got to be optimism about the future, which in some ways is almost scary. Sometimes consumers as a group are dead wrong when they're most sure they're right. [Of course, as wrong as consumers may be, investors could be even more wrong. The nearby chart illustrates the wide degree of disconnection between stocks and sentiment.] Home prices are now, well, as of March, a whopping 10.9% higher than they were a year ago. That's the word from Standard and Poor's anyway, via the Case-Shiller survey. It's not an index we follow, but the trend jives with the Census Bureau's home price data, which we do follow. We're still nowhere near our peak levels hit in 2005 and 2006, but improvements are the norm now, even if it's because the entire housing industry market had to shrink its way down to a sustainable size. What's it all mean? It means things are good. I still don't think things are economically as good as some want to believe they are, but the bigger bull market and economic growth are still intact. Now, I said all this to you for a reason, but I can't really tell you what the reason is. I'm going to have to show you, and I'll do so over the remainder of this week with a realistic look - and helpful perspective - on the overall market. At the very least there'll be an object lesson packed in, but more than that we can rectify what looks and feels like opposing opinions right now. So, stay tuned. Spinning Wheels, But.... You know, I'm not as impressed by the fact that the S&P 500 closed 0.64% higher as I am worried about the fact that the market at one point today was up by 1.5%; it gave up most of its gain for the day. That pullback may well be an indication of what traders are thinking right now. That's not the part that worries me though - the indices are simply stuck in the middle of support and resistance for the time being, and content to go nowhere. What concerns me is the way the VIX found support at its 50-day moving average line today, which jump-started a rebound. It matters, largely because it was the 50-day moving average line acting as a ceiling in the first half of May. Now it's the exact opposite. Moving average lines that used to be important lines in one way and then switch gears to become important lines for the exact opposite reason tend to be important lines in the sand. Now that the VIX has defined support at its 50-day line, it should pressure the VIX higher.... and that's generally bad for the market. It's still too soon to panic though. Heck, I'm the biggest pessimist I know right now, and even I would acknowledge the S&P 500 is impressively holding its ground. At this point we can only entertain the bearish possibility if-and-when the S&P 500 closes under its 20-day moving average line at 1636.96. The VIX would need to close above last week's highs as well to really spook traders into a bigger correction. Some good bullish news about today - the S&P 500 established a key ceiling, at 1674. Even if it takes a few days to get over that hump, we know a move above that 1674 level could kick-start another bullish leg for this rally. [I still say that's the low-odds outcome here, however.] Tomorrow could end up being a pivotal day, if either the ceiling or floor is broken. We'll talk about it then. It's Unanimous.... Nokia is Awesome Well, the long weekend didn't prevent the website's regular contributors from doing their thing. If you completely took Monday off, I highly recommend you go to the site and do a little back-tracking - there's some pretty good (and actionable) stuff there just waiting to be absorbed. One of the most actionable ideas from the site was Nokia (NOK), which John Udovich touched on here, and James Brumley touched on here. Something Brumley said really struck me: "Although as of 2008 Microsoft's mobile operating system was available through four different phone manufacturers - none of which were Nokia at the time - its market share was actually dwindling then. Indeed, the business-oriented OS was losing out to Research In Motion Ltd (BlackBerry at the time) and Apple. It was a problem, in that if business users were choosing Apple and RIM over the staple-OS provider of the business PC world (losing out to a retail consumer-oriented Apple no less), what chance could Microsoft possibly have in the smartphone world? ... Things can change, however. Now, not only has Microsoft teamed up with Nokia, the Nokia/Microsoft partnership looks like it could be the one to really take a shot at Apple's and Samsung's dominance. Even more interesting is that it's cracking that ceiling via the average retail consumer rather than the rarer (though often more lucrative) business customer." And, he's right. Though it's unlikely Apple will be unseated as the king of consumer smartphones anytime in the foreseeable future, Nokia's chipping away at Apple's and Samsung's leadership not by taking the backdoor route and sniping away business-class users, but by attacking the competition head on within the consumer market. Brumley goes on to explain exactly how Nokia and Microsoft are getting traction now where they couldn't before on their own. Udovich points out something else curious about Nokia's slow, but accelerating, growth: Nokia has tended to be strong in emerging markets and in Southeast Asia where many believe the company has been focusing on affordable feature phones for local consumers, its now positioning itself to transition more quickly into offering high-end smartphones ... Simavanichkul noted that differentiation is a key strategy (e.g. Lumia phones come in different colors) and that Nokia is also trying to bring down the price of a Windows phone (the Asha platform price is about $120 at its maximum, but for Windows phones it's about $200).... Nokia has just announced the release of the Asha 501, a new phone in the low-cost Asha range that will initially be aimed at the India market. However, the Asha phone will also be aimed at upper earners in emerging markets and possibly less demanding customers from wealthier countries. At $99, the Asha 501 will be offered free on low-usage contracts in Europe while it will be an upmarket offering in emerging markets. Both contributors like it, but it's worth mentioning that the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity liked NOK way back on May 8th before the stock was back en vogue. In fact, if I recall correctly, Nokia shares were still shaking off the ill effects of a pullback back on the 8th, but the guys over at the SCN EO knew what they were doing, stepping in right at the beginning of what looks like a budding bounce effort. I'm not going to tell you what numbers the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity is using as a stop or a target; that's reserved for members only. So is the full-blown analysis of the stock. But, I can tell you the free two-week trial to the SCN EO service will give you full access to that information during the trial period. In fact, during that two weeks you'll get everything members get, including any new picks. You can't beat the price of 'free.' Check it out. Or, copy and paste the following link in your browser: http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/?vmpd_ckstr[click_track]=SCN+Newsletter&vmpd_ckstr_redirect=/pages/SCNEO/v1/