Ok, So how's the patient doing? From the charts, there are a few interesting observations to point out.
Firstly, on the arachnoid physiology, if you consider the financials to be the heart of the markets, there are a few foreboding EKG readings to ponder.
<img src="http://elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1643125" border="0" alt=""><br /></font></p></font></p>
1) C just announced a 57% drop in earnings, and the market didn't respond with much enthusiasm. While today's 3.5% drop may not seem like a precipitous ledge, consider that C is the number one weighted component of XLF.
2) GS numbers have been called into question by some journalists. They cited some cloudy volatile figures used to brew the spectacular surprise report.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/14/news/companies/goldmanearns.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
3) Where does this lead to? Looking at the TA view of the XLF does not look very promising as the bottom channel kiss could have been set up for a bull trap. While soaring energy has been making up the slack (coincident with wonderful low inflation statistics reported every quarter), XLF has been just downright lethargic compared to the cumulative S&P 500's ascent off the last deep trough.
Secondly, looking at the cubes view, in case you missed it, I mentioned the four horseman have hit some potential short term resistance on their hyperbolic ascent.
http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=106345
Does this mean the q's are done? Not necessarily, the short term overbought conditions have shown some propensity to pull back since that post.
However, I've mentioned this several times in the past; considering how weak nasdaq has been these past few years, and watching it's recent strength, I could very well envision the techs coming back up to speed in the event that energy loses some of her recent stamina. Although, it does concern me to see how much weight RIMM holds in the major tech indices, and how it's exponential price rise hasn't quite been matched by quarterly earnings and rev--
http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105717 Though, that doesn't exclude the possibility of another leader rising to take RIMM's and/or even APPL's stellar leads (GOOG anyone?).
Lastly, net bearish sentiment continues to provide fuel for the upside. It's looking more and more like the mid 90s scenario, than 87 IMO.
In sum, techs are looking strong (long term) and any short term corrections could actually be a great buying opp, while the area to be short IMO would be financials. Lastly, although energy has been the silent, yet colossal bellwether for the last few years, I wouldn't be surprised to see the juggernaut take a breather and let tech take over the reigns for awhile.