OK, maybe there were more bulls waiting on the sidelines than yesterday's pullback would have suggested. Today the S&P 500 reached a new record high, and unlike yesterday, on Thursday the S&P 500 stayed at its new high levels. From a technical perspective it's a textbook bullish clue... "buy new highs", you know? Yet, I don't like it. The S&P 500 is now priced at just a hair under a trailing P/E of 18.0, and a forward-looking P/E of 15.7. Both are at - and maybe beyond - what could be considered a palatable, normal range. I just don't know how investors are going to justify higher prices anytime soon. On the other hand, traders don't need to justify jack-squat in the short-term. The market is more than capable of defying the odds for days if not weeks on end before investors come to their senses. The tricky part is knowing when to expect the turn. But I digress. As of today the market (the S&P 500 anyway) has entered breakout territory. Take a look. This is one of those times where my inner-scientist and my gut are at odds. My disciplined trader side says we have to take the clues at face value and be bullish. My common-sense side says this is all a big setup for a beat-down. The call? As much as it pains me to do so, I have to side with my inner disciplined scientist and say this is all a bullish sign. It's not a long-term call, but it's likely a trade-worthy one. A short leash is highly recommended. That's all we're going to say about the broad market today; there's no need to dissect the daylights out of a market's that's only barely bullish and could still stop and turn on a dime without notice. A failure to follow-through tomorrow (Friday) is really going to make our analysis even messier than it already is. Portfolio Update We've got one addition to our watchlist today... Newpark Resources (NR). Newpark Resources is an oil equipment and services play. There's nothing especially interesting about it, other than perhaps it's been reliably profitable for a while, and decent revenue growth has been the norm. It's just a well run outfit. The trailing P/E of 15.0 and forward-looking P/E of 13.3 are both plenty reasonable, especially given the company tends to top estimates rather than fall short of them. Its Q3 results will be reported on October 30th, so it's going to be a while before we know if NR can log another earnings beat. Just so you know though, analysts have been upping their Q3 EPS outlooks for the company of late. We're not adding it to the portfolio just yet. There's a little more due diligence we want to do on Newpark Resources before we pull the trigger. There's no particular problem we have with the chart though - it's got some good momentum in place already, and it looks as if NR is about to be bullishly flung out of a cup-and-handle-ish pattern. This is really more of a technical setup than a fundamental one. Speaking of the portfolio, yep, we've still got JC Penney (JCP) and Columbia Banking System (COLB). You may have seen JC Penney didn't have the best of days today, off by about 2.0%. You can thank Credit Suisse for the weakness; the research firm said "we remain very cautious" on JCP. It's pretty lame, actually. Being cautious on JC Penney is like being cautious of not stabbing yourself in the eye with a spoon when you sit down to have a bowl of soup - it doesn't really need to be said. Caution should be exercised with all turnaround stories, and JCP is no exception. That risk is why the reward is greater than average. All the same, the market wigged out a little bit. You know what I'm NOT worried about with JCP? The fact that it's gone nowhere for about three weeks. I know it may have been a little frustrating for some of you guys who are trading our recommendations. But, that's just trading. JC Penney is one of those stocks that doesn't move higher in a straight line. Rather, it rallies, then rests, then rallies, then rests... you get the idea. This is just a rest period, and I'm willing to gamble there's a rally phase around the corner. Of course, it's much easier to be confident when we have an 8.5% profit cushion to work with. As for Columbia Banking System, anybody who was sweating Tuesday's selling should have been relieved today by the big bounce. None of it is surprising to us though. In fact, it's all right on cue. The long-term rising support line was brushed with Wednesday's low, and Wednesday's bar itself was a doji... which often indicates a pivot. We still haven't cleared the catalytic level at $26.80, but we're pointing in that direction again. This is where the portfolio stands right now. We're looking diligently for additions to the portfolio, even beyond Newpark Resources. We're not going to force a square peg into a round hole though. In the meantime, if you're itching for some action, a couple of commentaries posted at the site today really caught my attention. One of them was Peter Graham's earnings preview for AutoZone (AZO). The auto parts stocks have been some of the market's biggest pleasant surprises for several years now. Pete dives deeper into why, and what to expect now. The other post worth a look is Bryan Murphy's quick take on how the race for an effective Alzheimer's disease treatment - after years of failure - is finally looking up. A small tweak in the way the disease is interrupted may be the key to a paradigm shift. While I don't want to overstate the value of this new approach, like Bryan said, this is something investors will want to put on their radars. Just One More Thing... Thanks for all the great feedback regarding yesterday's newsletter, in which we took a holistic look at the U.S. dollar, gold, bond, and yields. Looking at anything in that much detail can feel pretty heavy-duty, but the big rewards in the market are doled out to those who are willing to do the big digging like we did. In any case, you may have noticed the proxies we were using for our looks at gold, bonds, and everything else were actually exchange traded funds, save one... the U.S. dollar. We looked at the official U.S. dollar index to take the temperature on our nation's currency compared to other currencies. Even so, if we wanted to use an ETF to replicate the movement of the greenback, we could have - there's more than one fund out there mirroring the dollar. You also noticed we didn't make any firm trading recommendations on any of those exchange-traded funds even though we were willing to make a directional guess for all of them. It's not a lack of willingness. It's just a lack of the flexibility we'd like to have to do that sort of short-term swing trading; we really need to be able to trade intraday if we're going to trade funds - and leveraged funds - on bonds, gold, and the sawbuck. You know who is ready, willing, and able to trade the ETFs we looked at up close yesterday? John Monroe over at the Elite Opportunity service, which suggested trades on two of those index-based instruments today. This is actually kind of a big deal. I don't recall ever making this point before, but it's worth bringing up how sometimes the market and even individual stocks don't move all that well... kind of like now. During times like this, if you want to trade, the only instruments trading well enough to bother with are the non-stock-based ETFs like the ones we dissected yesterday. While we're capable of doing so here in this free end-of-day newsletter, the EO is much more active and precise with ETF trading. And like I said, John added two more short-term ETF trading possibilities in his newsletter today. If you're into that, I suggest you utilize your free trial offer from the Elite Opportunity team. Here's how. Or, cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/?vmpd_ckstr[click_track]=Newsletter&vmpd_ckstr_redirect=/pages/SCNEO/v1/