You know, Friday's session wasn't a bad way to end the week and kick off a long weekend. While we still have our doubts the market's actually wiggling its way into a breakout, every little bit of progress helps. Even if we stumble in the coming week the bulls took a pretty important poke today and may have finally pushed the market back into an uptrend. We'll tell you exactly what we saw that matters today in a moment. We've got some other business to take care of first. Another Win For Housing Real quickly, we were able to round out this week's housing and construction data on a high note. This morning the Census Bureau told us April's pace of new home sales kicked back up to 433,000 units, up from March's pace of 407,000. Paired with Thursday's news of existing home sales ticking higher last month on top of rising starts and permits for April (announced last week), the real estate trends have taken a solid first step towards recovery. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and it will take more than one month to undo some of the damage the housing and construction markets have suffered over the past few months. All big trends start as small trends though, and April's data so far is at least something we can build on. This coming week we'll get the most recent numbers for the Case-Shiller Index and the FHFA Housing Price Index. I suspect we'll see some more measured progress there too. Portfolio Update ANI Pharmaceuticals (ANIP) certainly got off to a good start for us. Though the opening price - the price we officially 'pay' to add it to our hypothetical portfolio - was a bit above Thursday's close, the bulls hit the ground running today and bid ANIP up from the opening price of 29.90 to the close somewhere around 30.80. There wasn't any news behind the jump. It just looks like traders continue to discover ANI Pharmaceuticals is undervalued and underestimated. We've still got Genesco (GCO) and Cloud Peak Energy (CLD). There was no news and not a lot of movement for either on Friday. There was a brief comment at Barron's today, however, that may or may not matter for anybody in the Cloud Peak Energy trade. I won't get into it; I'll just point you to the commentary. Let's simply say it was a mixed message for CLD. We still like the stock though, primarily because it's a Powder River Basin play. By the way, I somehow keep forgetting we still own Astec Industries (ASTE). To tell the truth, the stock slipped below our mental stop level a few days ago but I missed it when ASTE fell off my mental radar. It may have worked to our advantage though. Shares have picked themselves up from their pullback and are now starting to power higher again. Let's just be patient and give ourselves a chance to widen our gain back to previous levels. This is where we are. We've still got Bel Fuse (BELFB) on our watchlist too, though given how far it's continued to rally I'd say it's unlikely we'll be stepping in anytime soon. Boy, talk about coulda shoulda woulda. It is encouraging to see what our scans and criteria are capable of finding. I just wish it would have found BELFB one day sooner for us. We'll be running a new set of scans this weekend and I'm willing to bet we saw just enough marketwide bullishness this week to give us a pretty good selection of new momentum possibilities. We'll know by Tuesday, so be sure to check back then. If you need more trading ideas than we've been giving you here in the newsletter though, here's your best bet. Slowly Becoming Believers Yesterday we were lamenting the nagging reality that not one but all of the market's major indices were testing major resistance lines but none of them had actually cleared any of those key ceilings. Everything changed today. On Friday, the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the NASDAQ Composite all moved beyond their technical hurdles. Yes, it can happen just like that. We don't want to go into a diatribe about each and every index chart, but we do want to take a quick look at - and make a quick comment about - each one beginning with the S&P 500. As the chart shows us, the large cap index managed to make a new high close on Friday. It didn't actually make a new record-high; the peak of 1902.17 from May 13th is still the record. The S&P 500 did make a record high close though, and more importantly it closed above a huge line in the sand at 1897. The only worry I have here is traders hitting a psychological stumbling block at 1900. Right or wrong, investors see index levels ending in big round numbers as likely reversal points. If they see them as reversal points, they may act on and trade them as reversal points, which means we can't afford to doze off here at this critical level. The NASDAQ Composite had a huge day on Friday. We saw the index move above a big resistance line on Thursday, but the effort was suspiciously capped at the composite's upper Bollinger band. The upper band wasn't a problem today though. The NASDAQ followed-through on yesterday's move with today's session. There aren't any technical hurdles left.* The chart I'm most excited about is the Russell 2000. We explained yesterday it had not one but two technical lines it needed to clear to get back into bullish mode... the 200-day moving average line and a falling resistance line which had been in place since late March. It cleared both of them in one fell swoop today. The only problems I see are the same ones I've been telling you about for weeks - the VIX is too low and there's not enough volume behind the bullish effort to keep it going. Of course, the VIX has been too low for weeks yet has continued to inch lower, while the volume has been too weak for too long yet the market continues to edge higher. Hmmmm. My guess is we WILL see the bears push back early next week, dragging the S&P 500 back below the 1897 hurdle. What happens then will be the key for what's to come over the next few weeks. I'm hoping the S&P 500's 20-day or 50-day moving average line halts any pullback and sparks a bounce back to and beyond 1900. If it does, we'll have to be buyers then. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it though. * John Monroe disagrees with the notion the NASDAQ Composite doesn't have any hurdles immediately above where it is now. He sees one more line in the sand that could become a problem. His case is admittedly a good one too. If you want a highly-qualified second opinion, his is the only one I recommend getting. You can even get it for free for a couple of weeks by using the SCN EO's offer of a trial subscription. 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