I'm sure most of you will recall we've talked about J.C. Penney (JCP) more than a few times of late, mentioning in passing that we were still bullish back on April 26th, but diving into a bullish stance neck-deep back on April 9th. It's been a nutty ride the whole time, but with JCP shares up 27% since our first table-pounding look, we're not complaining. A thought occurred to me as I was scouring today's batch of headlines about J.C. Penney though - it's probably been really, really tough for you to get excited enough about the stock's potential to actually take on a trade. The media has been merciless for weeks now (as in an angry mob with pitchforks and torches), and that didn't change today. So how can we be so optimistic? I'll be glad to tell you, but first things first. Check out some of the headlines that were posted just today, after the company pre-announced discouraging news last night that Q1's same-store sales fell by more than 16%: Why J.C. Penney will hit $10 a share before $30 JCPenney Shares Rally in Face of Disaster Penney is also stumbling online Another Reason J.C. Penney's 'No Sale' Strategy Flopped: Digital Deals Are Proliferating Thing is, those headlines have pretty much been the norm for a while. So why in the world could/would JCP shares rally? Because investors (like you) as a whole are smarter than the media as a whole. The media thinks, acts, and writes as if a stock's current price actually reflects a company's current value. Investors and traders know better. In the real world, a stock's price is a reflection of a company's future.... anywhere from six months to two years in the future, though in the case of J.C. Penney I'm willing to bet the market's thinking even further down the road than that; turnarounds can take a very long time. The moral of the story is, you can trust your gut more than you can trust the barrage of messages the media tries to cram down your throat, particularly when the media gets to a unified consensus. As a matter of fact, the more the media does to send a message about a stock, the more inclined I am to trade in the opposite direction... seriously. Case in point: Apple (AAPL), after it peaked in September of last year, and again after it bottomed out in the middle of last month. Over the course of most of the 40% slide between September and April, the majority of pros and experts repeatedly said it was an undervalued "buy", only to pull new investors in before another bearish leg. Once the pullback approached the 30% to 40% level, that's when the Apple-lovers finally changed their tune to a net-bearish outlook. That's also when the stock started its current 19% rally, which was missed by a bunch of people who actually listened to the so-called experts. Yeah yeah, I know the valuation metrics don't look good. JCP lost $4.49 per share in 2012, and it's tough to imagine anything new (well, new again) CEO Mike Ullman could put into place that would turn the ship around this year. Liquidity's a problem too, forcing Penney's to take on a $1.75 billion loan from Goldman Sachs (GS). A couple of the articles linked above also argue that Penney's has alienated the bulk of its customer base forever. I don't agree. I've got a feeling that while J.C. Penney consumers - and all retail shoppers for that matter - are amazingly fickle, they're also going to be amazingly forgiving and forgetful. I'm also willing to bet that with just a little old-school advertising sales can improve enough in the near future to at least cover the loan; there's certainly little left to lose on the revenue front. When it's all said and done, if nothing else, sheer curiosity will draw some customers back, and eventually Ron Johnson's mis-steps won't even be a memory. In the end, it's all about the deals; consumers always find them. Enough investors innately know this, and know that JCP can still repair its iconic name. The bonus bullishness brewing for JCP is its stunningly high short interest of 36.8%. Can you say short-covering rally? Or said another way, J.C. Penney's 'story' is now more important than its results. That's enough to give the stock traction for months. It may not be rational, but it's still a reality. Welcome to speculative investing... definitely not the kind of thing you learn in an investing "how to" book. Now, that's a little glimpse of what it takes to successfully navigate today's modern markets. Things aren't just a matter of changing fundamentals. It's not all about the technicals either. Heck, the intangible factors may play more of a role in a stock's movement than anything you or I can point to and say "this is a data nugget that matters." And, it's a lot for one person to start digesting. That's why I recommend you don't try and do it by yourself. Let the trading veterans over at the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity do the legwork for you. Remember the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) trade I told you about a few days ago? That trade is now up 50%, and the SCN EO picked it using the same philosophy I described above - there's so much more to this game than just a valuation or a growth rate or a chart. There's also mood, sentiment, and environment, and that's where the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity excels. As proof of that claim, four of the SCN EO's eight currently-open trades are up by double-digits, and none of them were entered before January. That's solid stock-picking. The guys added two more picks today, one of which is the nearby chart. That's one of the best bullish reversal setups I've seen in a long time. If you want to know what the picks are - and pay nothing for it - you can still get the free two-week trial. Here's the deal. 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/ Another Day, Another New High I'm not even going to bother giving you my full-blown analysis of the market today. It is what it is. Stocks just posted their fifth daily gain in a row, and the twelfth daily gain in the past fourteen days. The S&P 500 is now up nearly 6% since mid-April, and up a whopping 20% since November. Thing is, the rally disconnected itself from the market's reasonable value a few weeks ago, and has been going higher since early March on nothing but euphoria and momentum. That's not a bad thing, mind you, but it makes any rational and conventional analysis of the market a little bit pointless - the herd will simply wake up one day and decide it wants to stop running. It could be tomorrow, or it could be in July. As for me and my money though, I still see an overbought market that offers very little upside from here. Just so you know, the put/call ratio I talked about yesterday closed at even lower levels today, which means it's at multi-week lows. That tells is confidence in this rally is high, and may have reached all-out complacency. That's a problem, as complacency is usually what we see before major market tops. The right game-plan from here is to wait for a pullback. The S&P 500 is already overbought, and with no technical floor anywhere close, a small blip could become a big correction in a hurry. That's not going to be a move you want to simply ride out. Either way, stick around. I've got a feeling the beginning of the rollover is going to be crystal clear when it starts to materialize. We'll be analyzing that move the day it happens.