yes tomW1exactly, most retail investors are not in this market, Steve and I have discussed this before.  This is also why the market is so much more volatile than in the past, retail investors can act as a buffer to keep the volatility down.  Analogoy would be like losing the insulation to a house, 

Basically it's lions vs lions instead of lions vs sheep the sheep would be the retail market.  This is also why when too many people see a pattern develop such as a H&S pattern etc, many times it doesn't play out or it plays out different; because the % of technical traders is so much higher now than what it was in the past when the retail investor was in the market to buffer things down.  By the way, this is why happens in the later stages of secular bear markets, the average retail guy (the masses) lose interest in the market after having been burned for years in major up moves and down moves.  For example, the previous secular bear market lasted from 1966 - 1982 or 16 years.  The Dow hit a high of about 1000 in 1966 and was back to 1000 in 1982, you had 16 years of up and down movements.  The the late 70's I read that most people had shunned the market and were no longer in it because of years of large up and down gyrations.  Then the secular bull market began in 1982 (though the bottom of the market was actually 1975), most of the masses didn't start getting back into the market until the later 1980's.  I think we have a similar thing going on right now: this current secular market market has now entered it's 12th year, so it's nearing the later stages, but it's still too short for a secular bear market to have concluded since most last 16 - 18 years on average.  However just like the 1966 - 1982 secular bear, I think the Mar 2009 lows represented the bottom/lows of this current secular bear so I don't think we'll retest them, just like the 66 - 82 secular bear didn't' retest the 1975 lows even though it lasted until 1982.  ( please see the first chart below)

In my view, technical analysis is an attempt to analyze the mass human psychology of the market and it identifies areas of support, and where fear and greed will come into play when certain patterns form or trendlines are broken.  However without as many retail guys in the market, it's more technicals against technicians.

I agree the market is at a juncture, yes it's overbought and decent pullback could gather fuel to provide an even better pullback and downtrend.  however with a lot of traders looking for a top, a squeeze to the upside could also happen as well.  

For now we've been noting the market conditions, we have been playing the trend with long after long. I realize that we are in a secular bear market that began in 2000 but we are in an uptrend for now.  I've noted too many people over the last month that have not caught any of these nice longs because they have been trying to pick a top and getting stopped out each time.  However a lot of you have also been playing the trend well and catching the ideas.  It's best to catch 80 - 85% of the trend, and let the top and bottom pickers/gurus pick the tops and bottoms.  Yes you'll get stopped out of positions when a trend change occurs, but if you've caught most of the trend, you should still have ample profits left.  

Think of analyzing and trading the market like weather analysis and driving your car:  For example, let's say you are driving in your car and it's a sunny day (think of this as an uptrend), however you start to see dark clouds overhead and the air starts to cool, therefore this puts us on alert that a storm may be coming and it's might start to rain.  The market analogy to this would be that you are in a strong uptrend but now you see negative divergences starting to form and overbought conditions (think of these as the rain clouds above), so this puts you on alert to tighten your stops etc.

However going back the example of driving our car and the dark clouds overhead, as we are well aware of, just because dark clouds show up, that doesn't mean it will rain, it just means that it might rain!  Yes it may start raining, which means you slow your car down and drive more carefully, just like in trading you would become much more cautious and exit some or many of your longs etc.  However just like driving, the clouds may go away and the sun pops back out, just like in trading the negative divergences might become negated as the MACD simply recycles back to zero, therefore you continue to play the trend.  Just like in driving, you wait for it to start raining before you slow down, in trading you play the trend until it starts to change.  Price is king

Since mid Dec we have posted maybe 75 - 100 long ideas and handful of short ideas.  Lately we've been showing 60 min charts of SDS, TZA etc as hedge trades to those of you who may hold a lot of long positions and you don't want to sell them all, so you can use these ETF's as hedges.  Or those of you who are aggressive can take shots buying these ETF's at support (bottom of their channels) but then if the market doesn't continue to sell off, you can exit them.  

Current Market or weather analysis:

Is it raining yet or is there only dark clouds overhead?  Currently it is not yet raining, the trend is up, however yes there are dark clouds overhead and thus we are on alert.  The market has now been above the 9 day SMA for 26 straight days and our indicators are overbought ( see the attached chart).  Also, the VIX is now at low levels and since it closed outside the bollinger bands and back inside them, that is a sell signal, so yes we are on alert.   see the attached charts

see the charts I have attatched

have a great weekend guys!

LOL yep, so true that's why it's better to learn how to fish on your own rather than relying on Gurus to catch the fish for you because like freddy said, they are hot for a little while, then they are not, none of them stay hot.

Here at BPT I do make some predictions and comments and I tell you what I think is going to happen or my preferred scenario, especially for commodities like gold and the grand picture on the market such as secular bull/bear markets i.e. such as I gold will make a new high again, and the general market is in a secular bear market that still has several years to go yet since secular bear markets last on average 16 years, this one started in 2000.  However BPT is much more of a research site vs a Guru site, we provide the analysis, and tons of trade ideas and tools for you to pick and choose from.  Using the 'learn to fish' analogy above, basically we stock the pond with the fish for you to catch.

I have subscriptions to other services and websites mostly in order to see what my competitors are doing and once in a while to get some ideas, but I make it a point not to read much of their market commentary because I don't want to get a bias and have them influence my own opinions/analysis. 

Didn't follow him then but didn't Granville call many tops during the  big bull run of the 90s, NEVER calling a rally in one of the greatest bull markets we have seen??  Kinda like Prechter did?