Happy hump-day, folks. How are things? A little lethargic? Yeah, I saw stocks closed about even for the day. In fact, they're flat for the past few days. I've got some thoughts for you about that - and some lines in the sand - in our chart discussion below. There are a couple of other items I want to get to first, however, like a look at gold, and some thoughts on one of the strangest "Wall Street is evil" rants I've heard in a long while. Not That He's Wrong, But.... Have you ever heard of a guy named Ronnie Moas? Or, let me ask you like this: Did you see the research guy on CNBC who absolutely went off on Apple (AAPL) and Amazon.com (AMZN) on Monday, downgrading them in a bit of a crazed rant solely because he thought the two companies - and their chiefs - were immoral and/or unethical? Yeah, I'm willing to bet that rang a bell, but if it doesn't, here's the clip. You have to see it. Now, I bring up the Ronnie Moas rant as a stepping stone for my thoughts on the matter. And, my thoughts are this - corporate greed and self-indulgence have become rampant within the ranks of many corporate management teams. I don't know that Amazon.com or Apple are the absolute worst offenders, but I agree with the basic gist of what put Moas on his soapbox in the first place. There's a flipside to that coin, however. Led by greedy, abusive jerks or not, the capital markets that foster opportunities for the occasional misuse of investors' money and abuse of employees (or abuse of partners' employees) are still your best opportunity to put your money to work for you. The returns on bank deposits can't keep up, and investing your idle cash into a self-owned business is still amazingly risky... far riskier than being in the stock market. Personally, I may not like much of what Apple does, but a rising stock is a rising stock, regardless of the reason. I can be an activist with the profits I make... even profits from less-than-honorable stocks. The other thing I don't like about Moas' premise is that it presumes corruption can't or won't occur outside of the capital markets, or in more altruistic environments... even those within the world of publicly-traded companies. It will. Evil, self-entitled people always find a way. That's nothing new. None of this is to say I like the fact that Jeff Bezos is probably out of touch with how difficult it is for most of Amazon's warehouse pickers to live on their meager wages. I agree they deserve more! But, your money - your retirement - isn't the place and platform you want to use to become an activist. Whether you choose to buy AAPL or AMZN or not won't hinder the company one iota; those corporations don't pocket the money when you buy a stake in those stocks. The companies got their money when they went public years ago, and the CEOs are paid out of current revenues. Unless you're able to convince millions of investors as well as hundreds of millions of consumers to steer clear of either company, you're fighting a lost cause. There are plenty of things worth being a martyr for, but this isn't one of them. That's my view anyway. If you agree or disagree, you're invited to post a blog entry or an article at the site. Or, to respond directly to my comments, you can post remarks at the bottom of today's newsletter posting. Just go to this page, click on the newsletter link at the top, and scroll down to the bottom of that posting to leave your feedback. Gold's Still in Trouble I don't want to get neck-deep into a discussion about gold's future today. I do, however, want to update one of our key gold charts that we show you from time to time. [Since we're the ones keeping the can of worms open, it's the least we can do.] It's the chart of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), the U.S. Dollar Index, and the 10-year treasury yield. Gold tends to be pressured in the opposite direction that the greenback and interest rates are moving, so we can get a pretty good feel for gold's true direction just by watching what the other two charts are doing. And what are they doing? As they say, read 'em and weep. The 10-year treasuries being sold by the Federal Reserve today hit the 3.0% mark today for the first time since 2011. The sawbuck is moving higher too, having punched through a short-term resistance line just a few days ago. Both are working against gold's value. The point is, though GLD - and gold futures - bounced a little bit last week, the wind's not blowing in a favorable direction. If the 10-year yields get comfortable above 3.0% and/or the U.S. dollar continues to increase in value (and it looks like they both will), that could be a huge problem. And, if the SPDR Gold Trust breaks under the recent low of $114.46, then hang on tight because that could really start a selling avalanche. Not Falling is Almost as Good as Rising As for the market, Wednesday was a lethargic day despite the fact that ADP said December's job growth was stronger than expected. All told, the payroll processing company said 238,000 new jobs were created last month, versus the 203,000 the pros were looking for, and the 229,000 that were added in November. That's two months in a row of pretty good job-creation numbers. So what are traders waiting on? My guess is they're waiting on Friday's official jobs numbers from the Department of Labor. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.0%, and the net jobs growth number is predicted to jive with the ADP number, with a forecast of 200,000 new positions. Until the projected numbers become the official numbers though, it looks like most traders are content to sit on the fence. Take a look at our chart of the S&P 500 below. I've added the narrow support and resistance range that's developed over the past few days. I know the market's unwillingness to move - up or down, we don't care - is annoying, but don't get frustrated here, and don't jump the gun. The longer stocks stay in this rut, the more explosive the move is once we're finally shaken out of these confines. The other advantage to holding the line here is that it gives the index a chance to develop a technical floor. This one's taking shape somewhere around 1820. That means we have a better shot at sidestepping the more significant pullback that was a good possibility a week and a half ago. I'm not saying the market can only go up from here. I'm just saying there's better-than-average shot of doing so. There's one big thing working against the market though. Remember the "first five days" theory we talked about a couple of times in recent newsletters? The idea is simple - however the first five days of the calendar year go are an omen of what the whole year's going to be like. Well, the S&P 500 is down by about a half a percent for the first five days of 2014. Not good. If traders wake up tomorrow and realize it's happened, they may well start to see every glass as half empty, and that's gonna make things tough on stocks for a while; nothing spurs future weakness like weakness in the recent past. Let's not freak out too much though. A tendency isn't a foregone conclusion. It's just a tendency. The S&P 500 will need to break under a truckload of developing support between 1800 and 1820 before we can give much credence to the idea.