delane - this is a technical analysis website, and we are as versed in fundamentals as much as you (especially Steve), but we find it better to follow the charts ourselves.  You mentioned something about when everything looks good the top will be near; well come on, I think we have navigated the market very well, we have played the major trends this year and last year very well (though we are far from perfect); near tops you tend to see divergence and topping patterns, near bottoms you see capitulations and divergences as well, to imply that the charts would improve at the top is false.

Yes the banks and financials have been leading and hold up well and that is a good sign, and who knows, maybe enough inside people knew something and that's why they have held up.  On the other hand techs tend to lead the market and they have not been lately, which is a negative.  News can trump the charts, but you can't trade off what ifs, no one knew that the news on Friday night was coming out unless you were a wallstreetinsider, you can't trade off that. 

There are positives and negatives in the charts and this year trading has been some of the most difficult we have ever seen.  As dylan and a few others pointed out, swing trading has been near impossible this year, though I think BPT has managed to do it fairly well still, we were long Mar - May, then short from May/June - July, then we played mostly the long side from July 15th and we've had a lot of individual plays do very well this year despite the difficult market.  Our BESN had a great run but got ahead of itself and is now consolidating. Most of the time it's been better to take profits quickly this year especially on initial bursts/moves i.e. recent examples are the ultra short ETF's (taking some partial profits on the first move (on Thursday for example or Friday morning) because now they are pulling back because the marked bounced nicely on Friday), DIG was a another recent Watch List example (and there's so many more), it had a nice move up, but then crashed, you have take profits fairly quickly.

The news on Friday night is interesting, but it's still up in the air if it will trump the charts or will just cause a temporary bounce back to resistance (1260 or a little higher) and then the market starts another sell off, or if this news changes psychology enough that a bottom is formed and a new uptrend begins, but again we'll react and adjust if we need to.  We need to see how the market reacts, but for now we think those prior support areas will probably act as resistance. Charts are basically snapshots of the mass psychology of the market, and at this point the psychology still looks negative, though that could change.

Be careful about being too cocky about what the market has to do, we are all students of the market, but no one ever really graduates, they just move higher in grade level over time!  The market surprises even the best of pros at times, we all get better at predicting and trading the market overtime and managing our emotions, but we can never totally be certatin what it's going to do, that's where money management and taking low risk trades comes into play; be disciplined and not over margined and you will make money over time.