Good afternoon everyone (or good evening, depending on when you've opened this e-mail). I trust your Tuesday was better than your Monday. Actually, it had to be - the market was up today after reaching the brink of a bigger collapse Monday afternoon. You know what though? I'm still not ready to say the bulls have fully taken the reins again. The VIX is also at rock-bottom lows, which as we illustrated yesterday doesn't exactly work in the market's favor. Bottom line? The right thing to do here is wait and let some more players at the table tip their hands, so let's hold off on any market discussion until tomorrow. Besides, we've got some trading business to take care of. I know we mentioned in yesterday's newsletter how a new pick was on the way. We even had a specific one in mind. It's still on the radar as of today, but we're not going to add it to our mental portfolio... at least not yet. Instead, we're going to suggest an idea that didn't show up on our radar until this morning. I still want to show you the pick that almost was, however, because I've got a feeling we're going to get into it at some point in the foreseeable future. We just want to make sure we get the timing right. The new trading idea we're not going to be entering today is BlackBerry (BBRY). I absolutely love the way the stock's been healing its wounds lately, but with today's 6.0% surge, I don't want to get into a BBRY at its current price. Like I explained about this stock already (even before I told you which stock it was), it's only a short-term trade and not a long-term investment. I don't think BlackBerry is even going to be around in its current form a year from now, but instead is destined to be eaten up by poor fiscal performance and/or a potential suitor looking for some cheap mobile technology. I do think, however, the market is starting to believe the sum of the pieces of the impending implosion of BBRY is going to be worth more than the current whole. In fact, I would almost be willing to make such a bet, IF we can get the right price and the right technical situation. The chart's current technical situation isn't the right one. What I was liking up until today was the way BlackBerry perked up in mid-December, successfully regrouped in late December, and renewed the bullish effort at the beginning of this year even though the market was weak. And truth be told, I like the fact that shares cleared the admittedly-not-overly-important 100-day moving average line today. I just don't want to buy anything after a big jump, as odds are good it'll face some selling pressure as early as tomorrow. Let's let it set up some sort of base here before jumping in. Instead, let's go ahead and add Microsemi Corporation (MSCC). I found Microsemi Corporation for you using my weekly sort-n-scan tool, which looks for stocks that meet a strict set of fundamental and long-term technical criteria. And, like almost every other stock we've traded in the past few months, that means even though we're willing to lock in a short-term gain on it, this pick has the potential to turn into a true long-term holding. Microsemi is, as the name implies, a semiconductor play. It's pretty deep into RF and wireless stuff, which of course has been all the rage for a few years now, and isn't going away anytime soon. There's nothing MSCC does that's earth shattering, but it definitely keeps other players in the same space on their toes. It also makes money - usually - even if margins aren't great. Now, if you're going to do some of your own due diligence, I'll give you this warning - there are two sets of fundamental/earnings data. The wrong one makes MSCC look quite undervalued. The right one makes the stock look, well, not necessarily bad, but not great either. You may have already seen the non-corresponding earnings numbers, depending on which sources you use to get information about stocks. The fully diluted numbers provided by the company's SEC filings are the ones I'm using though, and they say the trailing P/E is 52.1, while the projected 2014 numbers don't look much better. That's hardly a bargain. So what do I like about it? While I'd love to see screaming value and stupidly-strong growth rates, when you take a step back and look at MSCC from a distance, you'll see evidence of ongoing improvement. It's still not great, but it doesn't have to be great. It just has to be progress the market can believe in, and there's plenty of that here. What I'm really digging about Microsemi Corporation, however, is the chart. Though MSCC hasn't exactly been a big winner in the past couple of weeks, I'm willing to guess the bigger uptrend is going to kick in again, as it has many times since 2011. In fact, it's been a great "buy on the dip" kind of stock for a while, and the pullback between August and September - and subsequent push off of the 200-day moving average line - tells me the stock's gearing up for another big move, maybe not unlike the one we saw in mid-2013. I'd settle for one of the moves we saw in 2012. Again though, and as I promised you at the end of last year, I'm going to do my best to stay in this trade as long as possible in 2014, since the longer the rally lasts, the more money you're going to make. That's it - take it or leave is, but we're adding Microsemi to the pretend SCN portfolio. It joins Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), Silicon Image (SIMG), Fred's (FRED), and the recently-added First Cash Financial Services (FCFS). Speaking of the portfolio... As I suspected, when the market's tide turned for the better today, our holdings perked up. The only one I was really worried about was Fred's. I think we told you it was putting some pressure on its mental stop-loss of $17.60 in yesterday's newsletter, but I didn't want to pull the plug just yet since I smelled a reversal brewing. Glad I waited. Although FRED hit a low of $17.50 on Tuesday, the bulls stepped up to the plate again later in the day to squeeze out a pretty decent gain. I'd like to give the buyers a chance to do something with the effort so far, so we're not going to dump it here. It's still on a short leash though. News-wise, not a lot going on for any of our positions. The only thing of real interest was Skyworks Solutions announcement of its Q1-2014 earnings release and conference call. It'll be on January 16th. Go here for the details. By the way, if you're still not getting enough picks or enough performance out of the hypothetical portfolio I occasionally keep tabs on here in the newsletter, the solution is simple... the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity service! John Monroe and his team are totally dedicated to the SCN EO's results, and it shows. The latest example of how it shows: SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity members are now up 43% on the CytRx (CYTR) position Monroe had the guts and foresight to recommend less than three weeks ago, on December 20th. It doesn't get much better than that, although it's not like it's the first time the Elite Opportunity newsletter has put up huge gains in a short period of time. I'm jealous that I can't keep up, but I'd never deny those guys know what they're doing. Click here to learn more, or to get a free two-week trial. 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/