It may not have been a move made with much zeal, and it may well be a move that falls apart beginning on Wednesday. But, the bulls cleared a major hurdle today, and that has to count for something... maybe. We'll do our usual market thing in a second. Let's get the more important items out of the way first. Underpinnings to Keep in Mind We got a pretty good dose of economic data we really need to work our way through today. I know it's rarely riveting stuff, but the economy makes up the underpinnings for the broad market. So, if you have any interest in stocks at all, then you really do need to keep a close eye on what the economic landscape looks like. The good news (for you) is, the way we examine economic numbers is much faster and simpler than the way most of the rest of the media does it. And, our long-term charts of all this data puts things in a perspective the more popular financial media outlets just don't seem interesting in presenting it. With that as the backdrop, let's just start at the beginning of today's economic checklist, with a brief examination of last month's durable orders. In simplest terms, it was a good news/bad news situation on the durable orders front. It was bad news in the sense that they dropped whereas a gain was expected, but it was good news in the sense that bad news on the orders front means the Federal Reserve is apt to keep on stimulating. When all was said and done, overall durable slumped 1.3% in September, while durable orders not counting transpiration orders fell 0.2%. Economists were looking for a 0.5% increase from both measures. Is this a problem yet? I'll let you take a look at the long-term chart of both data sets and decide for yourself. Actually, I'll show you two charts - two representations of the same data - and let you decide for yourself. The first one is the percent-change chart. The purple bars are the percent changes (from one month to the next month) of durable orders without factoring in transportation orders. The gold bars are the month-to-month percent changes of overall durable orders, which includes transportation orders. As you can see, last month's lulls weren't terribly unusual. Now let's switch the perspective out. Now let's look at durable orders on an absolute basis by just plotting the total dollar amount of goods ordered last month. In this context, last month's lulls look meaningless. This is one of my biggest complaints about the way so many other people treat and interpret economic information. There's just never enough context, and it can be downright misleading. If all you were told today was to what degree orders changed for the worst last month, it would be easy to trade bearishly. And that's what most media sources do - give you one month's worth of information and make it sound like you have to make a trading decision right away on nothing but that one data nugget. That's why we make a point of making these charts and exploring the true long-term trend... because we know nobody else is doing it for you. But I digress. Let's move on to the next piece of big economic information, which was October's consumer confidence score. What we're talking about today is the Conference Board's measure of sentiment, which isn't the same thing as the Michigan/Reuters consumer sentiment index. The Michigan sentiment index (final reading) won't be out until Friday. The Conference Board's info is finalized and posted a few days before the final Michigan/Reuters score is. We look at them together because, well, they basically show the same thing and tend to move in tandem. They'll occasionally fall out of sync though, so to make sure we keep the best grip we can on the whole sentiment picture, we keep tabs on both. Anyway, the Conference Board's confidence store edged up from 89.0 to 94.5, which is the highest reading since 2007. I'm a little surprised, to tell the truth. Given the big stumble from the market earlier in the month, I would have figured everyone was a little spooked. Guess not. Whatever the case, consumer sentiment tends to move in the same direction as the long-term market, so today's news is a plus for the bigger-picture bull trend. Finally, we heard the last of the major real estate data we cared about today when we learned the Case-Shiller Index rose by 0.2% in August. We know it's ancient data here in late October, but that's just the way (and when) the Case-Shiller Index is calculated. Regardless, it's another positive for the bigger real estate picture. It's the highest the Case-Shiller Index has been since 2008, when it was on the way down. I said it last week but it bears repeating again - the real estate/construction market remains reasonably firm overall. We certainly can't complain about it. OK, that's all the time we need to commit to economic information in this edition. Let's move on to something else... like a look at today's market action. Yeah, But... Well, it's not the way I was expecting things to pan out, but it is what it is. The S&P 500 poked through the ceiling at 1967 today, and theoretically, with nothing left to hold it down the market could run higher for a while. I still have my doubts that's what we'll actually see. The S&P 500 has advanced nearly 9.0% from the low hit last Wednesday, which is just too much for less than a two-week stretch. On the other hand, stranger things have happened. Take a look at our chart of the S&P 500 and the VIX here. The breakout is clear, as is the VIX's break under a floor at 16.0. The VIX also broke under its 50-day moving average line (gray), and now appears to be en route to the floor around 11.0. I can't help but wonder if the VIX is going to reach the 11.0 area right around the time the S&P 500 hits its ceiling at 2010 again. It would be exactly the way things are supposed to happen. While I can't get past the nagging feeling that stocks are overbought and ripe for a reversal, based on what we're seeing right now, the bulls just extended the rally for a couple more days. With all of that being said, it would be much easier to get bullish on stocks if bonds would start a downtrend and/or gold would hit new lows for the year. The fact that bonds (we're using TLT as our proxy) have remained in a bigger uptrend is a reason for concern for the market, as is the fact that gold (we're watching GLD there) has yet to break under its recent support. Putting it all together, what you have is a very confusing big picture. Don't worry though... the dust will clear soon enough. In the short run, the momentum is now bullish, but boy would I keep a short leash on things. JetBlue Takes Flight Again We don't know how many of you guys waded into JetBlue (JBLU) back on October 17th after we showed it to you in the October 16th newsletter. If you didn't pull the trigger then, though, here's your reminder. After hitting a little turbulence after our initial look [pun totally intended], it looks like the bulls have regrouped over the past three trading days. All it took was a brush of the 20-day moving average line to get the party started again. These second wind efforts are often the ones that really get things going. Just wanted to point it out if you felt there was too much volatility then. Don't forget, the JetBlue trade was originally one given to Elite Opportunity members well before that initial jolt on October 16th. Sorry about that. Like we've mentioned to you before though, we have to be very careful about doling out trade ideas on an end-of-day basis. The EO is doing everything in real time, which gives them a ton of flexibility (and therefore profitability) we can't tap into here in this free, end-of-day newsletter. Go here if you'd like to start getting more out of the market. Or, cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/?vmpd_ckstr[click_track]=Newsletter&vmpd_ckstr_redirect=/pages/SCNEO/v1