Alright, time to get our hands dirty again and take a close, brutally-honest look at where this market is going. Though I've got a couple of trading ideas for you bouncing around in the back of my head right now, the priority here is understanding the market's bigger tide (since it can shipwreck even the best of individual stock picks). We'll look at the market first, and after that I want to update a couple of the stock ideas we've sent out recently. One I'm pulling the plug on, and the other I'm reiterating. And, there's an "atta boy" to go along with those looks. First things first though. Near-Term Market Outlook The last time I shared a marketwide outlook with you guys was Friday. It was the prior Wednesday, however, when I put it all on the table and told you I'm still looking for at least a small pullback before stocks get back into a bullish groove to end Q4 on a high note. My outlook hasn't changed. In fact, despite today's early bullish efforts and Tuesday's big bullish swing, I'm actually more convinced of a pullback now than I was then... even though we've yet to see one even begin to materialize. The fact is, the market - let's keep using the S&P 500 as our proxy - has had five days to punch its way through some key technical resistance at 1230. This resistance is the combination of the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, as well as the horizontal resistance established by the highs hit in very late August. The upper 20-day Bollinger band is in the mix as well. The S&P 500 took a couple of good swings at that ceiling, but nothing worked - it's just too much to fight through right now. The end result of that failure is fatigue from the bulls... the ones who are in the fight anyway, which isn't many (volume remains tepid). They're only going to try for so long before giving up and yielding control back to the bears. In fact, that may be happening as you read this. After Tuesday's peak, we've seen two lower highs. Even before Tuesday's peak we began to see lower lows. Even without noticing those details though, you can take a quick glance at the chart and clearly see fading momentum, and a possible rollover underway. It's not just the S&P 500 that's dropping the hint though. The Dow, NASDAQ, and Russell Indices have all suggested the same rollover by making the same series of lower lows and lower highs. Each of them has plenty of room to slide lower before finding a meaningful floor too. The big gun in this fight, however, is the VIX. I've explained the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) before, so I'm not going to rehash it now. I'll just sum it up by saying when the VIX is rising, it's usually bad for stocks, and then the VIX is falling, it's usually good for stocks. It's a great confirmation tool when the major indices aren't dropping clear hints. Anyway, the VIX is doing exactly what the bulls don't want it to do... it's rising. And, it has a lot of room to keep doing so before it hits its likely ceiling around 45.0. Yes, there's a small chance the 20-day and 50-day moving averages at 1177 could act as a floor for any pullback the S&P 500 makes here. Neither has been all that important lately though, so it would be unusual if they suddenly became a factor again. I suspect the floor around 1120 is the more likely landing spot. The VIX should be back around its ceiling at 45.0 around the same time, if the market does indeed make this slide. Frankly, I hope I'm wrong about all of this. Every chart tells a story though, and the current charts aren't all that compelling. It matters even to owners of individual stocks simply because a bearish tide will pull most stocks down with it. Now, there are a handful of 'takeaways' you have to understand about this forecast. In no particular order... This has nothing to do with fundamentals. Earnings growth has just been mediocre, but good enough, while the market's as cheap (on a P/E basis) as it's been in a couple of decades. Eventually the fundamentals will win. In the short run though, stocks are hitting a headwind, and there's no point in you being a value martyr. As was already said, this is a short-term outlook, just designed to play the week-to-week ebb and flow. This isn't a call for a new bear market. In this particular situation, precisely where the S&P 500 finds a bottom and bounces isn't as important as the decisiveness of the reversal. Maybe the floor's at 1120, or maybe it's 1100. Maybe it's 1135. Wherever it ends up being, a decisive rebound will be the critical clue. That's it. I'll send an update to you as needed. Now, about some of the stocks we've mentioned lately... Goodbye Cincinnati Bell I still say it's a great opportunity, but there's a not-so-fine line between being confident and being stubborn. So, we're dumping Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE:CBB) from the list of stocks we like. As I said a few newsletters ago, CBB has been teetering with a cross under its 200-day moving average line after a string of lower lows and lower highs. As of today, it's no longer teetering - it's under it. No need to keep hoping when we've got so many other good possibilities on the radar. Medallion Financial, Take 2 Back on the 10th we put Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:TAXI) on your table, and boy are we glad we did. We sensed a breakout effort above $10.00 was brewing, and sure enough, TAXI blasted off later that day, and by the end of the week had cleared the ceiling around $10.16. It reached a high of $10.59 on Tuesday before finally taking time for a breather. Wednesday's dip was largely profit-taking, however, and Medallion Financial is in the black today (it's regrouping around $10.13) even though the rest of the market isn't. Point being, the breakout has already been started, so for anybody who thought about getting in then but didn't - only to see it race away - this is a second-chance. Between a dividend yield of 7.0% and rising taxi-medallion prices, underscored by New York's improving taxi business, this is just one of those easy, low stress small cap ideas you can hold onto for a while without losing sleep. You Heard it Here First Don't know if you're specifically following your favorite commentators at the SCN site or not, but if you aren't, you might want to start looking at who's writing what you're reading. Jonathan Yates has been delivering some great ideas, and better still, he's been doing it way before the mainstream media has been able to get around to it. For instance, he pointed out Spirit Airlines Incorporated (NASDAQ:SAVE) was a solid opportunity back on September 27th when it was trading at $11.49. Today it's at $14.49... a 26% advance. The point is, our guys are sharing ideas and comments before everybody else is. If you want to funnel a certain person's picks and articles into your RSS feed, you can do that. Just move your mouse over that person's name from any of their articles, right click, and choose 'View Feed'.