Welcome back from the weekend, everyone, and for those of you who are football fans, what a weekend it was! Yes, I was right on Friday when I said this year's Super Bowl was a pretty even matchup. On the other hand, my prediction the Seahawks would win as well as cover the spread was, well, wrong. It almost wasn't wrong, but "close" only counts and horseshoes and hand grenades. I'll also just add I probably would have been right about a Seahawks victory had head coach Pete Carroll not inexplicably decided to throw the ball when he had three chances to run the ball less than three feet... on a night his running game was working rather well, no less. Yeah, yeah - I know it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. And, what a lot of critics don't appreciate it how Seattle only had one timeout and 30 seconds to run three running plays - he'd have been lucky to get two plays in, whereas an incomplete pass at least stops the clock. But, given the circumstances and how there was at least one time-out left (the Patriots likely would have taken a timeout as well), wouldn't you at least have to take one shot at running the ball and then set up a pass play after the run didn't work? Just sayin'. Anyway, the good news for you is that the SmallCap Network folks pick stocks a lot better than I pick Super Bowl winners. And, you can get some of those picks for free. You heard that right. If you want free stock trading ideas delivered to your e-mail address, your smartphone, or both, you can get the occasional pick from the guys who make stock-picking look easy.... the Elite Opportunity team. Just so there's no confusion, this isn't the same thing as the regular Elite Opportunity newsletter. Those subscribers get a newsletter every day, most of which have at least one or two trading opportunities in them. The free picking service is delivered less often, and with less detail, than what full EO members are getting. Still, free is free, and the Elite Opportunity team has more than proven it knows what it's doing. The follow-up question is, why? There's a simple answer... John Monroe wants to prove to you he and his analysts know how the market really works, and what really drives stocks. Nothing does that quite as well as a few winners, right? In any case, don't delay - if you haven't done so yet, sign up for the EO's free stock picking alerts today. Here's how, or just cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEOL/v1/ Q4 Earnings Report Card Are you sitting down? I hope so, because you might be a little shocked by what you're about to read. With 60% of the S&P 500's constituents having reported last quarter's numbers, the S&P 500 is on pace to earn $27.64 for the fourth quarter of 2014. That's quite a bit lower than the $29.56 the index was supposed to earn as of January 20th, and well below the $30.51 the S&P 500 was supposed to earn as of the end of last year. Oh, it's also lower than the $28.51 the S&P 500 earned in the fourth quarter of 2013. Yes, you read that right - we're probably going to post a year-over-year earnings decline for Q4. That's the first time we've seen it happen in years. Now, before you freak out, there's a major footnote about the earnings dip - you can blame the telecom sector for most of it. A couple major telecom companies booked losses in the fourth quarter only because they took charges for their pensions. The sector was supposed to book a profit before earnings season started. Then again, don't be too dismissive of the news. The telecom sector only accounts for about 3% of the S&P 500's revenue, and about the same degree of the market's earnings. Just to put things in the proper perspective, here's the table that compares the earnings expectations then and earnings expectations now for all the major sectors. Clearly we can't blame telecom for everything. Energy gets the lion's share of the blame, though the financials and staples did their fair share of the damage. We'll probably take another look at some detailed earnings data later this week. We just wanted to whet your appetite today. We're Still Not Impressed Giving credit where it's due, the bulls did a fantastic job of digging themselves out of the hole today after a pretty ugly start. Gotta be honest though... it's not like today's action actually pulled the market's fat out of the fire. Let's just get to it by looking at the daily chart of the S&P 500. Yes, the index bounced back today after brushing the lower Bollinger band and closed back above the key line at 1991. The index still didn't move back above the 20-day moving average line at 2024, though. In fact, it's starting to look like there's a horizontal ceiling developing there; the S&P 500 has been capped there for the past three trading sessions. Just for kicks, take a look at the NASDAQ Composite chart. It looks about the same. The NASDAQ pretty much brushed its lower Bollinger band today, did move under its 100-day line (gray) for a while, and looks like it defined a slightly-rising support line. Even with the snapback rally though, the composite barely tested its 20-day moving average line as a ceiling. And, the NASDAQ is still below the 50-day moving average line. I guess this is my long way of saying we're still just as at-risk of a breakdown as we are a breakout. Heck, I'd say after the past several days we've pretty much confirmed traders don't know what to do, so they're not doing much of anything. The market is basically where it closed in mid-November. It just seems like we're getting closer to the end of it all, as both sides of the table are enormously frustrated - even more so than usual - here. Something's got to give soon, as bored/aggravated traders are getting restless enough to make a major move. We still haven't ruled out the possibility of putting the bigger-picture rally back into motion. We just get the feeling the bears have the bulls on the defensive at this time, and even more so now that cracks are starting to show up on the earnings front..