We hope everyone had a good weekend. There was certainly plenty of great football to watch, even if our picks from Friday didn't work out. Tonight's Bengals/Steelers matchup is always a good intradivision-rivalry game too. The pro pickers say Cincinnati is favored by 6 points, and I can't say I disagree with that call. On the other hand, I think we'll keep our official picking-against-the-spread powder dry this time around. Besides, we've got plenty of other things to take care of in today's edition. First and foremost, it looks like Larry Summers isn't going to be your next Fed Chairman. I'd be kidding you and myself if I said I saw his withdrawal coming. I'm also a little surprised the market initially responded in the bullish way it did regarding his decision. Then again (and as I've made a point of saying a few times recently), when investors are hell-bent on buying stocks, they can pretty much spin anything into a bullish clue. I like the way John Monroe explained it in today's SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity newsletter: "I say maybe we shouldn't be surprised because like I said to close out last week, even with a poor jobs report and horrible retail sales number on Friday, the markets didn't care. The resilience has been nothing short of amazing. I also mentioned Friday, every time the indexes looked as if they were going to break down during the last few days of trading last week, they somehow managed to find a bid and negate any potential confirmation of a sell signal." And yes, I agree that this glass-half-full mentality is the biggest reason stocks are rallying as well as they have been lately. It may not be a good reason, or even a sustainable reason, but there's no point in being a martyr just on principle. Perhaps even more encouraging is another bullish catalyst due in early to mid October. Some of you already know what I'm getting ready to say, but just to make sure we're all on the same page, the seemingly-semiannual debate over the Federal Government's debt ceiling is about to rear its full ugly head. It's been peaking out every few days over the last couple of weeks, but with the debt limit possibly on pace to be met as early as October 18th, the argument will soon take center stage again. While concern about a failure to raise the limit seems like it should be bearish (this same argument led to a downgrade in the United States' credit worthiness in 2011, fer cryin' out loud), in reality, your representatives in Washington D.C. will almost assuredly come to their senses at the 11th hour. When they do and the can is kicked farther down the road - as it has been for a few years now - the market's likely to see a silver lining in that cloud and celebrate it with another round of stock-buying. Now, I'm not going to complain about our Senators, Representatives and our President coming to some kind of consensus, even it it's just a temporary one. I am, however, going to point out (1) how the timing of this potential consensus really screws up our normal trading calendar, especially here in the wake of the Syria crisis and Summers' withdrawal, and (2) how the focus on the potential debt-ceiling agreement takes the focus off the actual value of the market, which has quietly become a little unnerving again over the past few weeks. As for idea #1 (the timing of any debt-limit agreement), September should be - and usually is - a weak month for stocks, though that weakness is what sets up the usual year-end rally between mid-October and late-December. The problem this year is, September's been strong, and the entire summer's been strong for that matter. The market's up a solid 6.9% since the end of April, which means there may not be a lot of room left to keep on climbing in Q4. You could argue the pre-debt-ceiling argument should drive stocks much lower in front of the mid-October deadline, setting up the usual fourth quarter bounce. Honestly though, traders don't seem as willing to sell on discouraging news in this environment as they're willing to buy on what's perceived as good news. In other words, I can see the market (miraculously) just holding its ground here until the agreement catalyst falls into place. The second possible outcome following any debt-limit deal is a "buy the rumor, sell the news" reaction, though I don't believe that's what's in the cards here. As for gripe #2 (the market's frothy valuation), the S&P 500 is now trading at 17.1 times its trailing income and 14.8 times its projected income. It's sustained, and even rallied into, higher P/E ratios than that in the past, but it's not necessarily been easy to do. And, given the numbers Standard & Poor's is currently working with, expectations are for average income growth of 15.7% over the coming four quarters. It's possible the market could post that kind of improvement, but let's face it - it's not like the economic data has been thrilling lately. It'll be a small miracle to crank out that kind of earnings growth. My fear is, even the slightest of missed expectations could cause investors to suddenly realize just how much the market's rallied since April. Once they're disappointed, it shouldn't take long for the selling to materialize. Now, I'm not saying any of this to you from my soapbox just to be a wet blanket. I'm just trying to get us all thinking about the bigger picture. We've put a lot of focus on the near-term charts recently, which is important. It's the bulk of our concern, in fact, but some things on the horizon will most certainly affect charts in near future. Speaking of... ... while this morning's knee-jerk bullish reaction to the Summers news (though I doubt that announcement was the actual reason for the big buy-in) was decisive in taking the market to new multi-month and even new multi-year highs this morning, I find it very interesting - and a little telling - how stocks peeled back quite a bit from today's highs. Though stocks jumped at the open, there wasn't a lot of participation in the effort. It's just that there was nobody putting up a fight. What's it mean? Well, it wouldn't surprise me if today was the last hurrah for the rally. The market has a funny way of making itself look as bullish as possible right before a big bearish move. Stocks ended last week on a fairly bullish note, but, it wasn't until today's early surge it looked like we might get back above the upper Bollinger bands and start to really rally again. Now with all those folks starting to get off the sidelines and back into the market, the market can start its pullback here and dole out the maximum misery. Heck, it may have already started that move. Just something to keep in mind. OK, I know we were a little more preachy and a little less analytical with you today, but this was some groundwork we needed to lay because we know what's in store for the newsletter for the rest of the week. We also know what's apt to be in store for the broad market over the next few weeks, and this perspective will help with that too. Our plan of action for right now is just to sight tight and see who's actually in charge after today. The S&P 500 may have closed higher, but it also closed well off the highs and the VIX suspiciously inched higher rather than lower today. If the VIX tiptoes higher again and/or the S&P 500 pulls back - even just a little - that could start the correction snowball. We're certainly at a point on the technical chart where it would be easier to fall than to climb. Let's see how things take shape on Tuesday before drawing any conclusions. In the meantime, here's a special offer for SmallCap Network newsletter subscribers.