Happy hump-day, friends and fellow traders. We've got some goods news, and then some bad news, and then some good news for you today. The good news is, those of you who were lucky enough to sign up for our free stock-picking alert service a little over a week ago are truly starting to reap the benefits. One of the service's very first picks (delivered last Tuesday) is now up about 10%. While the whole point of adding this new but separate feature to your free SCN membership was to streamline and pinpoint what you get from us, we're going to go ahead and let you know now that pick was Target (TGT). The company posted earnings yesterday and the stock jumped another 6% in the wake of the news, adding to the 4% or so it was already up since the Elite Opportunity service picked it a little over a week ago. Why am I telling you this now if we're not going to do any stock-picking here in this newsletter? Hey, if you want to go ahead and trade Target now, be my guest. I think it's a little pointless at this time though. That's the bad news. The time to get into TGT was last Tuesday when John Monroe recommended it. I'm just saying you'd be up 10% if you had signed up and acted. Now a bunch of you are already on board with the free alerts, and that's good. A bunch of you haven't signed up yet, however, and that's bad because you just missed out on a very, very good trade. Go here to start getting those picks, or cut and paste this link: http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEOL/v1/ So what's the other good news? As I was doing a routine check-in of some of the recent small cap stocks we've profiled lately for you ladies and gents, I saw something quite exciting from one of our newest favorite names. Squeaky Clean and Ready to Roll Remember CES Synergies (CESX)? This was the demolition and construction-waste disposal name we profiled for you back on November 4th. We knew at the time earnings would be coming out soon, and sure enough, the 10Q was posted Thursday afternoon of last week. James Brumley covered those details last Friday, which we pointed you to in Friday's newsletter. The more I think about those results and look at the chart of CESX though, the more I think there's a message here that bears repeating, and an observation that merits highlighting. First, last quarter's revenue was up 17% on a year-over-year basis, and up nearly 10% from second quarter's total. The company - through its wholly-owned subsidiary Cross Environment Services - generated $5.14 million in revenue last quarter. That compares favorably to the year-ago Q3 figure of $4.38 million. It also compares favorably to Q2's top line of $4.681 million, and to Q1's 3.81 million in revenue. Folks, that's a big deal, not because the numbers are enormous but because CES Synergies is a long-established company that already has a very respectable, reliable revenue track record under its belt. See, building on an existing revenue base generally doesn't allow for triple-digit screaming growth, but that's only because the existing revenue flow is so stable. Just ask the people running companies like General Electric (GE) or even Apple (AAPL) - past success can really (relatively) raise the bar on future results. That's a good thing though. Given CES Synergies' long-standing foundation, I'll take 17% growth in a heartbeat just because of the stock's minimal risk. You gotta love a small cap company supporting itself... particularly a small cap company that's proven its new expansion plans are already getting traction. I stand by my previous guess - I can see CES Synergies driving revenue approaching something just a little south of $30 million in 2015 as its expansion effort gets more traction. Anyway, that's not the core of what I wanted to discuss with you regarding CESX today. What's really got me fired up here is the shape of the chart since late October. Have I ever explained to you what we call a wash-n-rinse day? To give credit where it's due, it was John Monroe over at the Elite Opportunity service who explained the premise to me, using "wash and rinse" as the analogy. In simplest terms, sometimes a stock just needs to pull back and shake off either all the weak holders and/or give would-be buyers a chance to start wading in at a price they're willing to pay, kick-starting an uptrend. It's a sort of a capitulation, I suppose, and often a necessary action just to clean off any psychological or structural overhang getting in the stock's way. Just like washing a dish, a stock gets submerged into the soapy water, scrubbed clean in just a matter of seconds, and is then pulled out again squeaky clean and ready to use. That's the dish everybody wants. Yes, it's a silly analogy, but an accurate one. More important to us right now is, CESX looks like it's already been through a wash-n-rinse day, back on the 11th when it hit a low of $0.07 and snapped back to a close of $0.45. In the meantime, it's been forging ahead, just as the wash-n-rinse day suggested it would. I don't know how high it's going to go. All I know is, given the underlying corporate story and the big growth already at hand (as evidenced by last quarter's numbers), I'd be very surprised if CESX wasn't at considerably higher levels in the near future. The Same Red Flags Are Waving We'll keep this short and sweet, mainly because there's not a lot to talk about. Yes, we know with just a quick glance at the broad market using the S&P 500 as your proxy stocks simply looked lethargic today, but not especially worrisome. Once again, however, we saw clear weakness from the two charts we don't want to see weakness from. Yes, I'm talking about the Russell 2000 and the NASDAQ Composite, which were down 1.06% and 0.57% today, respectively. This is the same kind of disparity we saw on Monday when we first pointed out the NASDAQ and small caps tend to lead the market higher or lower. To see weakness from these two indices now doesn't bode well for the overall market. Here's the NASDAQ Composite's chart, which doesn't look too alarming in and of itself. It does look stagnant though. If the 4655 floor breaks down, that's when we need to get really concerned. On the other hand, with the way the VXN is already pressing modestly higher, I'm already starting to get concerned. The Russell 2000 is the chart is more troubling. Aside from the steep selling today, the index managed to close back under its 20-day moving average line on Wednesday. There's still a ton of support for the Russell 2000 around 1145, so we don't want to jump to conclusions here. It wouldn't be out of line to start mentally preparing for a sizeable pullback though, just in case. We'll talk more about it tomorrow. Right now the only thing I want any of us to do is sign up for your free stock picks! Again, they can be sent by e-mail, or by text alert and e-mail... whichever you prefer. The people who signed up early are now up big-time on their Target trade, and are up pretty nicely on last Tuesday's other trade as well. I'll go ahead and let you know right now though, I got another new stock pick as a text alert just a few minutes ago, and it looks juicy too. Seems like Monroe is going to be sending out plenty of trading ideas at no cost to you, so please, do yourself a favor and sign up today. Here's how, or cut and paste this link: http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEOL/v1/