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Happy hump-day, friends and fellow traders. How'd the second day of selling go for you? It could have been worse, all things considered. Investors were less than thrilled with last quarter's results from Apple (AAPL), and in that it's the biggest company in the world, if it's deep in the red, the market probably will be too. But, it ended up not being that bad. I'm kind of surprised.

This doesn't really change my near-term bearishness though. In fact, in a routine look at some things I examine every single day, I've got yet another reason to expect this budding breakdown to end up going somewhere south of here before a trade-worthy bottom is hit.

We'll get to that last today. The first thing I want to do is follow-up on the can of worms we opened yesterday.

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Howdy folks. Well, on Monday we said we were pretty sure the market was trying to make a top, but we wanted to see one decisive "down" day to seal the deal on the outlook. We got it today.

I can't stress enough this is only a near-term call.... at least for the time being. So, don't sweat it too much if you're truly in it for the long haul. If you're only interested in the short run though, today should be a little concerning.

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Welcome back, folks. We hope you had a great weekend.

What a wild start to the new trading week on Monday, huh? Amazon.com (AMZN) - already at new highs - gets upgraded just a few days before earnings, PayPal (PYPL) begins trading on its own, Greek banks re-open, and..... oh yeah, gold crashed to a multi-year low, and by default broke under some key support levels.

Let's just start there today.

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Good Thursday afternoon, one and all.

Well, looks like my guess was wrong about Greece not agreeing to the austerity measures established by the rest of Europe as the only way with which bailout funds would be provided. Oh, there was violent rioting in the streets, more defections, and a broad sense of humiliation across the entire country, but the country's lawmakers gave the agreement a thumbs-up.

U.S. stocks went higher as a result, of course. After all, investors are simply supposed to "buy good news", right? We'll see. All I can say is, don't be surprised when none of these measures don't make a dent and Greece comes back to Europe again in a few months to let them know it still can't pay its bills. You just can't go from being a socialist country to being a capitalistic version of a socialist country in the matter of a few weeks.

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Howdy folks. How was your Tuesday? Well, it wasn't a banner day for the market, but the bulls did manage to muster a little follow-through on Monday's bullish burst. We still contend it remains to be seen, though, whether or not this three-day rebound is actually going to lead into anything bigger and more bullish.

We'll look at the new trading framework in a moment. First, let's straighten out what the media didn't get quite right (or complete) regarding this morning's retail sales numbers for June.

The Rest of the Retail Sales Story