Well ladies and gents, we just logged day eight of the government shutdown, and though society as we know it has yet to crumble, it is becoming clear the market's growing weary of the mess. I have to believe the investing public innately knows the shutdown itself doesn't really have a big or permanent economic impact, and I'm sure our politicians are smart enough to not do any serious damage to the country (the kind that might keep them from being re-elected). But, I'm also pretty certain most traders know what's going on in Washington could still end up being a sizeable short-term drag on stocks, and they just don't want to ride it out. That's why the bears tested the deeper selling waters today, stopping just short of going over the edge of a cliff after a pretty good drubbing. So now what? It's not a particularly simple answer. The upside to a big dip like today's is that it was so harsh, we may well see a dead-cat bounce come out of it on Wednesday. Or, it was so bad, Tuesday's dip may well be the one that finally spooks the market into a bigger selloff. See the dilemma? I've said it before but it bears repeating now ... the worst thing the bulls and the bears can do is fail to pace themselves. Big moves sometimes invite big reversals, and other times they invite traders to jump on the bandwagon. Good luck figuring out which is in the cards. My prediction: I'm looking for a dead-cat bounce following Tuesday's pullback. I don't expect it to be a particularly big or prolonged one, but it should be big enough to make us all wonder if we may yet sidestep a more significant correction. There are a couple of reasons we're looking for a quick bounce here. One of them is the VIX. We've talked about the S&P 500's Volatility Index, or VIX, before, so there's no need to rehash that lesson now. We'll just point out how here above the 20.0 level, the VIX is at levels where the S&P 500 has usually formed a bottom. The other reason the bulls are apt to strike a blow here is that as much as the market has pulled back since September 19th, it's not been an especially-high-volume pullback given the size of the retreat (telling us this move isn't necessarily a majority opinion). But what about the President's press conference today underscoring the gravity of the situation, comparing the budget impasse to dropping a nuclear bomb on the economy? Yeah, that certainly didn't help, but I don't think President Obama was the cause of the selloff any more than he could reverse it. The only thing the press conference did today was accelerate what was apt to happen anyway. By tomorrow, we're all going to realize he didn't say anything we didn't already know, which puts us back to square one. The more important question at this point is, what's the bigger-picture outlook here? Like I mentioned to you already, I don't see any bounce later this week actually going anywhere significant. The S&P 500's 20-day moving average line at 1694 is a likely cap on any rally, but if you want to get a really good feel for where technical resistance lies for the market, I think you have to look at the NASDAQ Composite. Last week's ceiling at 3818 should come into play again sooner or later, and by the time the composite could actually test that level, the NASDAQ's upper 20-day Bollinger band will be right there too. Once we reach that area and stall, the next move lower should be the one that plows below the NASDAQ's lower band line at 3700 and finally gives us that long-overdue correction. My downside landing target for the S&P 500 is still 1630 and/or 1600, although both are just checkpoint targets. The former is where the index bottomed in September (and where the 50-day Bollinger band currently rests), and the latter is a key Fibonacci retracement line By 'checkpoint' targets, I just mean we'll need to reassess things for you there to see if the sellers are ready for round two. A move to the lower of those two lines would only be about an 8% drawdown from the late-September peak, which would technically count as a full-blown correction, but wouldn't be as big as what we would hope for. I'd really like to see a correction of 10% or more to completely clear the slate for a rally in the last couple months of the year and early 2014. We'll have to play the hand we're dealt though. The really annoying part about all this shutdown noise is that it's taking investor attention away from something that matters, and is putting it on something that doesn't really matter. That's right - earnings season is officially here. By the time you're reading this Alcoa (AA) will have already reported last quarter's numbers, kicking off Q3's earnings season. Since it's likely to be tough to find it in the midst of shutdown mania, we're going to do our best to keep you on top of all the major earnings announcements lined up for the week. Here's this week's schedule. Finally, though he may not have a large quantity of trades under his belt yet, he more than makes up for it in quality. SmallCapGuru has rushed to the top of the stock-picking leaderboard at the site this week, with just two (well, technically three) picks in a little over a month. All three are profitable, by the way. While his picks are clearly high-quality ideas, I also like the way he - or she - rationalized one of them, pointing out the distinct possibility of a short squeeze that looks like it at least partially materialized. We're looking forward to more picks from SmallCapGuru. You might want to go ahead and follow him at the site, just to make sure you catch his next call.