Now that was a Presidential debate. I'd have to objectively say, that's Romney 1 Obama 0, but there's plenty left to debate. I've got a strong feeling, this is going to get pretty good, as it appears you couldn't get two more polar opposites with Romney making an aggressive effort to takeover, while Obama is eagerly trying to convince America he needs another term for his plans to pan out. From body language to their positions on various issues, the sharp contrast is most definitely a sign of the times. The next three weeks will likely be excellent reality TV. All I know is whoever ends up winning needs to give every small business in America the opportunity to thrive and succeed. It's the backbone of this country and the backbone of capitalism. There's some chatter out there today that Europe got a little nervous after last night's debate, because the whole world is wrapped up into the concept of bailing out struggling economies and letting big business know it's ok to fail. However, if your business or our business fails, who's going to come in and save us? Errr.... I doubt good old Uncle Sam is going to walk through our door and say, "Hey, here's a bunch of money, now let's do it right and you be a good boy this time, ok?" From the various feedback we receive from readers daily, there's plenty of arguments coming from both camps. What did you think about last night's debate? In the newsletter world, they say if one person provides feedback suggesting something, there's a hundred others thinking it, so we're curious. Right now, there's even a lot of debating going on with the markets. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the truth is we're still seeing mixed signals in the very short-term. However, we still believe when it's all said and done, the markets are going higher. We provided a fairly detailed trading plan to work with yesterday for those who were interested. This morning the QQQ's, which represents the top 100 NASDAQ stocks, hit our $69.45 target for a short-term entry into some put options, now we'll see if the markets start to move lower. However, remember, if the QQQ's break out above that $69.45 level in convincing fashion, you might best cover up. We also provided a very specific level to get long this market should the indexes start moving lower and hit our target entry levels. We mentioned a rounding top on the DOW's daily chart earlier this week, but that rounding top formation was broken this morning as the DOW managed to trade back up to last Tuesday's high right on the number. So far, it hasn't managed to break above last Tuesday's high, but the day's not over. If this market is going to start moving higher, it's likely going to start happening any day, or even hour now. That's what the charts are telling us anyway. Again, the weekly charts look good, the daily charts look suspect, so that's where we're getting mixed signals. Fundamentally, earnings need to be good because stocks are priced for success right now. Anyone who tells you otherwise needs to have their head examined. If you're a believer that small caps tend to lead a bullish market, have a look at this daily chart right now of the Russell 2000. It doesn't look very pretty does it? On the surface, any novice chartist can look at that and come to the conclusion the Russell appears to be headed lower. However, it's important to respect the consistency and noise elimination of what weekly charts provide. And, the weekly chart of the Russell is still holding up. I believe small caps are to the stock market what small businesses are to the private sector. Although we've managed to uncover some serious small cap winners throughout the year, the reality is money flows and volume interest in small caps continues to wane. That's just another solid argument the landscape of our economy, the tone and sentiment needs to change. They've been saying this market has had a "risk on" mentality for the last couple of years, but the truth is people in general are afraid to take risk these days. It's almost a scared mentality based on my observations. A solid return to small caps and speculative stocks in general would be most welcomed in our space. Then and only then would you start seeing us get more and more active revealing select small caps we think will provide you with monster returns. Until then, we're just going to continue to be very selective, which is fine. If everyone ran out and bought every idea they heard about, they'd go broke, I can assure you of that. It's like dating... date anything and everything and you're going to end up in a bad place at some point, but if you're selective, you've got a much better chance of finding someone worth marrying. This market is going to get real interesting, real soon. Let's see how the rest of the week unfolds. Have a great afternoon.