'Tackling' next week may become a trickier call than Quarterbacks made in Sunday's Super Bowl game. However we don't expect bulls to be bulldozed even though the market basically rolled-over as we anticipated for February.

The expectation was for excess euphoria at the end of January to exhaust a bit; albeit temporarily, with an erratic staggered (stages of alternating moves) drop in 'parts' of February.

One rather important aspect to me is near-total failure of money managers yet to embrace the upside. I didn't intend picking on Goldman Sachs, but their big strategist guy shifting from bearish all month to 'bullish' for 'some' customers, was sort of a 'red flag' that it was time for a pullback. For them to buy.

In sum: there's no change in the progression; Friday was basically dull and a bit defensive. The suspicion is more downside for the major Indexes; but with a possible intraweek rally coming-up corrected to the CPI if it's softer.

Well now it's an ET market: ET? Extra Tension (did you think extraterrestrial?).

That comment on CPI has to be taken gently; because prices firmed-up a bit in the post-data time-frame; such as Oil moving up just Friday in the wake of an output reduction by Russia. Fine by me for Oil, especially since I expected Oil to hold the low 70's (given Strategic Petroleum Reserve support buying); as it did, along with projections of rising Oil demand globally over some time.

When looking at charts notice that Oscillator action has retreated considerably already, while Summation 'congestion' (tightly concentrated dot postings) tend to suggest more corrective actions forthcoming, in-general.

I continue to believe that there's 'hope' by most money managers that S&P as well as desirable stocks that have been hot and cooling a bit (ranging from the usual suspects to recently aghast shakeout... seen frequently over a year but still always gets attention.

And we have February Expiration coming up on the 17th. Writers want lower; and they might get it. But depends on CPI or of course any 'global anomalies'.

The Bull is not dead; it's classic to set-back and calm; and it's like a football play that fails and the coach and QB go back to their playbook to regroup a bit. Barring some exogenous event (like the worst imaginable possibility for the shoot-down of a UFO over Alaska and maybe another one near Hawaii) the market should be poised for more upside 'after' this behavior completes.

By the way fingers are crossed that the USAF (or White House) wasn't trigger happy with whatever got shot down, given criticism of being slow to respond several days ago. Late info. indicates F-22 pilots did not detect any sort of jet propulsion system. So probably not a military or civilian aircraft. They report it was 'silver and cylindrical' in shape and seemed to be just floating.

O.K. .. we'll see. But I have no idea what the market reaction would be to this being an extraterrestrial encounter. (Did I really just type that?) Now thinking it becomes especially interesting given that the U.S. Navy especially has been encountering UFO's increasingly in recent years and we have a team now at the Pentagon investigating for-real. So did an F-22 launched Sidewinder take down a 'sidewinder' alien craft? Hope ET had a parachute (weekend humor?)

Bottom-line: probably a stair-step correction that has more to go but could be interrupted by an intraweek rally, then some chop surrounding Expiration.. as lots of open interest in Calls written as the market probed highs in late Jan.

More By This Author:

Market Briefing For Tuesday, Feb. 7
Market Briefing For Monday, Feb. 6
Market Briefing For Tuesday, Jan. 31