Good Tuesday afternoon, one and all. We hope everyone had a nice, relaxing long weekend, and if you didn't, today's bullishness certainly made it much easier to start what will be a shortened trading week. That's not to say the bulls are going to continuing charging, of course. After all, we've seen days like this before - recently - to no avail. The only thing today really proved was that the indices are content just to bounce around in a sideways trading range. Thing is, we still contend stocks need to make at least one more low below their August 25th bottom to completely clean things up and burn off all the froth that's been building up since, well, really since 2013. We'll slice and dice it as we always do, but first, I want to take a couple of minutes to look at two commodity charts we don't normally look at. Though traders have had good reason to lump all commodities into the same pile of late, I think we're starting to finally see a divergence in how and why each of the major commodity groups are moving. Better still, I think there's an opportunity in the differences. A Closer Look at Copper and Aluminum Just as a refresher, I'm still bullish on oil, and could take or leave gold. We went ahead and stuck our neck out on crude back on August 28th. Oil was trading at $45.26 then, and it's at $45.83 per barrel now. No biggie. Sure, we'd like to be miles ahead by now, but that wouldn't be realistic. It was a long-term call, and we're ready to stick with it for the long-term now that the supply is finally starting to dry up and now that even OPEC is starting to feel the pain of overproduction. In the same sense, I've got a feeling copper and aluminum may have already hit their long-term bottom and from here are poised to make bullish progress few others seem to think either one will make anytime soon. You may have seen it, but if not, copper mining company Glencore has finally decided to shutter two of its mines for a year and a half on the heels of multi-year low copper prices. This decision will take about 400,000 tons of copper out of the world's annual supply of about 19,000,000 tons. The news follows a few months worth of similar news from other copper miners, including the big Kahuna - Freeport McMoRan (FCX). Most of the majors and the miners have finally garnered enough common sense to shrink their way to profitability. At the same time, with China finally on the verge of putting some serious stimulus on the table (to the extent China's demand matters) copper demand should start to perk up again at the same time copper supplies should start to taper off. I think this story is pretty well told by the recent shape of the chart of copper prices. Take a look. Once Freeport and a few other miners started to put the brakes on a couple of weeks ago, AND once a rebound in China became inevitable, the copper market started to perk up. Just for the record, it could take a while for the supply/demand dynamics to make a noticeable dent in the price of copper. Once it does though, I've got a feeling it's going to take off in spades; the industry does a terrible job of pacing itself, for better or worse. Underscoring my theory that any rebound from copper could take a while is the sheer amount of copper currently on hand. According to the LME (London Metal Exchange) accounting of all the copper currently stored in warehouses that's ready for delivery, copper inventory levels are at multi-month highs. Here's that chart from InfoMine. What I'm counting on is a sudden - and bear in mind that "sudden" is a relative idea for the slow-moving mining industry - shrinking of supply at the same time demand moves into higher gear. The disparity is the opportunity. We could get a few months of bullishness out of it, if not more than a year. The key to it all is that nobody expects it. Aluminum is a slightly different story. That is, I see demand starting to perk up just as miners and smelters have finally dialed back on their capacity. The difference between copper and aluminum is, aluminum isn't starting out with the disadvantage of an enormous supply. Here's the chart of aluminum prices, as traded on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. Today's sharp bounce is pretty telling, though we've been ripe for a bounce for a while. It's also pretty telling that aluminum industry icon Alcoa (AA) was upgraded by Bank of America today, with BofA's investment research arm saying it feels the aluminum market has stabilized... although I'm still not sure AA would be the ideal way to play this budding trend. And, here's the aluminum supply/inventory chart from InfoMine. Just so there's no confusion, we're not seeing copper or aluminum as short-term trades. If you're just looking to tap into the short-term volatility of the commodity market, we still recommend gold or oil as the best way to play commodity swings (since they're doing most of the swinging), and we still recommend the Elite Opportunity as your trading guide for gold and oil (since the EO is watching both gold and oil on an intraday basis and responding to those ebbs and flows when trading opportunities arise). Here's how you can put the power of the Elite Opportunity newsletter at your fingertips, or just cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEO/v1/ Mmmm... Whatever Yes, the market soared a hefty 2.5% today. Just bear in mind this isn't something we haven't seen before... to no avail. All the major indices still have some big-time resistance lines to clear, and if anything, those ceilings became stronger today. We're now at something of a do-or-die moment for the bulls. The previous peak at 1994 for the S&P 500 that had been serving as the upper edge of a trading zone is about to be augmented as a ceiling by the 20-day moving average line. At the same time, the VIX is on the verge of testing its own 20-day moving average line as a floor. The binary scenario is simple. Either the S&P 500 punches through the ceiling at 1994 and the VIX breaks below its 20-day average currently at 24.0, or they don't. Just don't jump the gun. The NASDAQ Composite doesn't look any more compelling. It's still got a huge ceiling around 4851 to deal with, and the VXN is dancing with a floor around 25.7. Here's the rub. In both cases, even if the index manages to clear its near-term hurdle, there's an even-bigger ceiling just above there. For the S&P 500 it's the convergence of several other key moving average lines around 2075. For the NASDAQ it's the convergence of several key moving average lines around 4980. My fear is, the markets will end up breaking up the short-term ceilings and lure everyone back to a state of bullishness only to hit the wall at the bigger ceilings and roll over again. Then again, that reversal - sure to be fueled by a wave of frustration and disappointment - may well be the one that drives the indices to their true capitulation. Whatever the case, the right place to be right now is on the sidelines, watching. This remains a day-to-day journey, and one way or another we foresee one last blowout low.