Downtrend Requires Discipline

It's not easy to navigate a market with one finger on the buy trigger and another on the sell trigger, but that's the way it's been for me lately. On the one hand, I realize that institutional selling has been in the major averages since late March. When distribution comes into the market, it gets tougher to make money. Bullish charts start looking not-so-bullish and bearish charts get even worse.

On the other hand, I realize the market continues to serve up technical breakouts in heavy volume -- not to mention scads of stocks showing resilience. A day hasn't gone by during the recent pullback where the market hasn't presented an intriguing buy opportunity. It did it Wednesday with Seagate Technology (STX) when the stock staged a technical breakout in heavy volume, and it did it Thursday when eBay (EBAY) jumped out of a big base in huge volume. I open a small position in eBay even though I realize it's a challenging environment for breakouts to succeed....391 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.

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