Thursday was, I confess, a disappointment. The reason is that the day started off so sensationally well: I was loaded to the teeth with energy-related stocks, including oil itself, and the overnight session had been brutal for oil, with the commodity being down about 5% at the opening bell. I’m cynical enough at this point that I went ahead and covered oil as well as a few of the stocks within minutes of the opening bell, but the recovery that took place in oil (which freakishly commenced when an oil inventory report came out showing just how bloated supplies were) completely took the wind out of my trading sails.

More generally, the Dow remains trapped within its thousand point range, and we continue to linger near the top. Other indexes made lifetime highs this week, but the Dow is still giving the bears a thin reed of hope. There is absolutely new scheduled news of consequence for Friday, so the only driver is going to be what’s going on between Greece and Germany right now.

By the end of the day, the Dow Transports were sporting a honking big shooting star pattern, which I suppose was formed based on the resurgence in crude oil cost. The pattern remains potentially bearish.

And our old pal the VIX still “owes” us another blue bubble. Considering what was going on in December and January, things have been annoyingly calm, with February being a complete stinker for the bears. C’mon, blue circles – – let’s add another!