Happy Tuesday folks. Just a couple of housekeeping items for you today - we can keep it short and sweet. Frankly, there's just not a lot to talk about market-wise until the indices find some direction... which didn't happen today. Let's dive into the two housekeeping items first. News That Actually Matters Every Friday I give you guys a preview of the economic announcements that are in the lineup for the coming week. Two I made a point of mentioning last Friday were last month's new home sales, and this month's consumer confidence (from the Conference Board). Well, both were unveiled today, and both were good. In fact, both were surprisingly good. Confidence-wise, consumer confidence ratcheted up from 74.3 in May to 81.4 this month. That's the best score we've seen in five years, As amazing as that is, what's more amazing is that consumers are feeling great despite the fact that stocks are down more than 3.0% for the month. The two things don't quite jive with one another, you know? If the impending end of QE really is going to deflate the economy (which is the reason stocks got whacked), what the heck are all these consumers so optimistic about? My rectification: The consumers who are feeling better and better about their financial condition aren't the same people who were getting out of the market last week. Makes sense. We've long heard that we're in a "rich are getting richer while the poor stay poor" economic environment. I suspect non-rich folks are spending what little extra they have on iPads and new cars rather than putting it into their 401k. Thing is, most consumers fall into the 'non-rich' category, and have no stocks to shed. As for what you need to do about it, I don't think the news requires any action right now. But, I do think we should interpret it at face value and assume the trend of feeling better and better - as the chart clearly shows is the case - is good for the long-term market, and particularly good for consumer-oriented stocks like Apple (AAPL) or Ford (F). Speaking of consumer confidence... One of the other economic news items I put on your dance card for today is last month's new home sales. They reached a pace of 476,000, up from April's 466,000. That's the highest pace in five years. Oh yeah, home prices were also up 12% on a year-over-year basis in April. That's the fifteenth straight month the home price index (FHFA's) has gone up. It all jives with something I've been saying for several months now... the real estate market is getting better. I still contend that the pace of growth is going to taper off now that we're near full speed on this front. But, even milder growth is still growth. One last note (on that note)... There were only seven major earnings announcements in the queue for this week, but this is one of those weird weeks where all of them mattered more than a little. One of the ones I thought was going to be most telling was today's Q3 earnings news from Lennar (LEN), which just so happens to be a homebuilder stock. Given everything you just read, it should come as no surprise the company did well last quarter. Just so there's no misunderstanding, though, Lennar did exceedingly well. Operating earnings rolled in at $0.43 per share (reported at $0.61 with an accounting reversal) versus estimates of $0.33. Revenue grew 53%, deliveries were up 39%, and the backlog was 55% higher than it was a year earlier. More of the same is expected indefinitely. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll just show you the per-share earnings trend chart from cnbc.com. The accelerating rise speaks for itself, and I have little doubt that the company will meet those rising targets heading out of 2013 and into 2014. [By the way, the surge in Q2 of 2012 was an accounting-driven surge rather than a blowout quarter.] Here's the thing... Lennar is no isolated exception. Almost all the homebuilders are riding the rising charts for construction and sales data that we've been showing you since this time last year. I also think there's some proverbial meat left on the housing bone for investors of these stocks, even if the pace of growth is tapering off. Today's Predictable Move Doesn't Really Change Much Like I mentioned yesterday, the shape of that bar (in addition to the shape of Friday's bar) set up a bullish move today. That's good. Then again, so what? This was the dead-cat bounce that we widely expected. It still hasn't carried the indices above the more important lines in the sand. The volume behind the upward effort was also very feeble. I'm not impressed. In fact, there's more room for the market to keep rising without clearing any of the meaningful hurdles we need to see cleared before the bulls actually have anything to cheer about. Our usual chart of the S&P 500 tells the tale. We got the close back above the lower 20-day Bollinger band. The VIX is pointed lower again too, and also has plenty of room to keep moving lower. I can see the market getting some bullish traction out of this for a few days. On the flipside, so what if it does get traction? It's still not enough to push the S&P 500 above the near-converged 20-day (blue) and 50-day (purple) moving average lines. Until and unless the index moves above those levels, there's not enough for the market to really build a rally on. Oh, by the way, the 20-day moving average line is on the verge of falling under the 50-day moving average line. If that happens, it's really going to be tough to get things going again. Traders are watching that kind of stuff in search of subtle clues of the undertow. If they see that crossunder, it may well deflate what little hope of a quick recovery the bulls have left. Bottom line: Though I still see things being erratic, I've got a feeling the S&P 500 is going to retest the 1618 area. The first big down day we see after that should be the beginning of the next leg of the correction. For what it's worth, the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity has pegged 1530 and 1617 as the S&P 500's big lines in the sand. They've also got a bull trade as well as a bear trade in the hopper for when either of those two levels are tested. I can't really tell you how they're going to trade things, partially because it depends on how the market behaves once one of those two levels are hit, and partially because it would be wrong to divulge the SCN EO's strategy to non-subscribers. But, I can tell you how to find out what the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity is thinking here - get the free two-week trial! I've said it before and I'll say it again... the time to plan a trade is before you're up against the wall. If nothing else, that's what makes being a subscriber to the SCN EO so great. These guys see look at all the possibilities before hand, and have a level-headed plan in place before crunch-time. Give it a test drive. Or, copy and paste the following link in your browser: http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/?vmpd_ckstr[click_track]=SCN+Newsletter&vmpd_ckstr_redirect=/pages/SCNEO/v1/