Is everybody ready for the weekend? It looks like a bunch of us are going to get another round of snow on Sunday and Monday... just in time for St. Patrick's Day. Maybe those of you in the wintry weather's path - the northwestern quarter of the country - will have the luck of the Irish before Sunday evening and the storm will end up somewhere else. Unfortunately, the weather forecasters have been pretty well spot-on this year, so it would take an inordinate amount of luck to sidestep the impending snow. Yeesh. I don't know about you, but I'm through with winter. Too bad winter isn't through with us. You know who did have more than a little luck today, however? Anybody who got the March 4th newsletter and took our advice and picked up some Genesco (GCO) shares the next trading day (the 5th) somewhere around $74.33. If you pulled the trigger then, then you're up about 4% on the trade now. No, it's not a lot - at least not yet. But, its chart looks like it was shot out of a cannon today, and is en route for higher highs. Go Go Genesco! Remember yesterday when we suggested the sharp intraday reversal bar for Genesco was an omen that most of any sellers had finally been washed out and that the buyers were plowing back in again? Yeah, well, today's follow-through underscored the idea. GCO shares were up above 5.0% later in today's session [around print-time anyway], reaching new multi-week highs in the process, and knocking on the door of a multi-year ceiling around $79.00. I'm telling you, I just have a feeling Genesco is gearing up for a pretty big move. Speaking of big moves, although I went on and on about it yesterday, I have to mention Frontier Communications (FTR) again today... for the same reason as Genesco. That is, I just get the feeling FTR is brewing up a breakout effort as well. Getting above the resistance at $5.00 could put the effort into motion. I don't remember the last time we updated the mental stop levels for our six open picks, so let's take care of that business today. For the just-discussed Frontier and Genesco, let's draw our lines in the sand at $4.75 and $72.00, respectively. For Cooper (COO), I think the $126.90 area is about as much ground as we'd want to give up before pulling the plug. Astec (ASTE), Silicon Image (SIMG), and PICO Holdings (PICO) are tricky, as all three have made oversized moves in recent sessions and are overbought and ripe for profit-taking. We want to give them ample breathing room, but we also want to protect most of our unrealized profits. So, this is more of a "feel" than a science. Our best feel for mental stop levels on those three names, however, are $40.40, $6.20, and $25.18, respectively. By the way, when we say "mental stop", we're just saying that's the point where we want to reassess the situation and make a tough decision. We generally don't like entering stops with brokers, as some traders can see where our stop levels are and mess with our trades. I know we mentioned we might have a trade or two for you this week, but honestly, there was nothing I liked well enough to get into it in this market environment. We'll start looking at new possibilities next week once the marketwide dust settles (so we can actually see what's going on) and we have a new batch of stock-scans. Worse Than It Seems (Though Still Not Bad) Well, we didn't get a dead-cat bounce on Friday following Thursday's melt-down. On the other hand, it's not like the bears were shredding stocks today either. Traders mostly sat on their hands Friday, still digesting Thursday's dip and trying to figure out what it means. On the surface those traders didn't seem to come to any conclusions. When you look under the proverbial hood though, those traders are thinking more bearishly than the market indices would suggest. If you're wondering what's leading us to that idea, the answer is, the VIX. While the S&P 500 didn't lose too much ground today, the VIX - aka "the fear gauge" - logged its second day of strong movement above its upper Bollinger band. It's a clue that more than a few people are positioning for a bearish move by using options. And, if they're thinking bearishly, odds are good they've already planned to trade bearishly, creating the very selloff they're afraid of. [Yes, a self-fulfilling prophecy.] We could still get a dead-cat bounce early next week, but like we told you yesterday, it won't mean a thing unless the indices can break above some very important resistance levels. We'll talk about those levels if and when the time comes. For right now, our bigger concern is figuring out where this bigger bearish wave is going to stop and reverse. The S&P 500 has a lot of potential support around 1830, but for some reason I just can't quit thinking January's pullback is going to be a model (in terms of scope and shape) for the weakness that's starting to materialize here. That was only a short-term, 6.0% lull, and I have to think this one will be something along those lines. So what's the bigger-picture MO right now? I'm going to sign off for the week by giving props to John Monroe over at the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity who said it perfectly in today's edition of the EO: So what's our strategy at this point? To look for a logical level across the major indexes to sparingly add value based bullish ideas, not aggressively, sparingly. If we see something technically rear its ugly head on the short-term charts, we may sparingly enter into some short positions but as it stands right now, we're literally caught between what appears to be a very short-term downtrend in the midst of a very long-term uptrend and that's just precisely why we'll let everyone else take their shots right now, while we continue to sit tight and let it all play out. Sounds good to me. That wasn't even close to everything Monroe had to say today, and honestly, it wasn't even the best take-away from Friday's Elite Opportunity newsletter. I can't give you everything he's putting out there for his readers though... it wouldn't be fait to current SCN EO members. I will tell you how to read the rest of today's Elite Opportunity edition, though - start your free two-week trial to the service. In fact, I recommend you do it right now. The weekend is officially here so I know you've got some time to invest exploring all the great stuff John and his team are publishing. Just do it. I'm sure you'll like it, and if not, just cancel it - no questions asked. Here's how, or cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEO/v1/