Happy New Year

Hold onto your hats, folks. The Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) notched the first weekly advance of the New Year this past week, marking the third-best weekly gain since the bear market collapse began back in mid-September. In what might be a head-scratcher to some investors, the stock market went on a bullish rampage Friday (hey, it was the third-best one-day gain of the year), shrugging off brutal employment data to focus on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--otherwise known as government handouts to banks.

Alas, while it’s nice to see the market snap the 2009 losing streak, small-caps are still trapped within the confines of the recent trading range parameters. Now, if we can rustle up the courage to blast through 474 this coming week, then the upside breakout target move comes in at 517 – which would be a “Katie bar the door” kind of move in this sideways consolidation environment.

For those of us caught up in the actual detail minutia of chart activity, a 61.8% Fibonacci of the January pullback is at 485.39, so if you combine a 474 breach next week with a push through 485, then 517-518 becomes a very real target (which might take a week or two to scale)...

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