In an interview yesterday billionaire George Soros said, "the economy has actually bottomed and I think we are facing a positive quarter, and I think that is largely due to the stimulus."

You may hate Soros. If you are a hardcore Republican and watch FOX News then you know he helped fund Obama's race for the White House and gives money to liberal causes. But whatever you may feel about him he is one of the most successful investors of the past fifty years. He started with nothing and became a billionaire by playing the commodities boom in the 1970's, investing in foreign markets, and by betting against the pound.

A year and a half ago he shorted bank stocks and warned everyone of the coming stock market crash.

His track record when it comes to investments is undeniable and it is because of that fact I bring his comments to your attention.

He now joins the list of Marc Faber and Jim Rogers who think this upswing in the market will continue.

Yes it may be a very weak recovery. Most likely a "jobless" recovery. It is a recovery not fueled by real economic growth, but by government spending and bailout. It will probably end in another mess. But it should last for a year or so and end with much higher stock prices then what you are seeing now.

We are going to have positive GDP growth for the rest of this year and a recovery in real estate next year. Later the Fed will have to raise rates to deal with the inflation that will come from all of the money printing and that will cause problems for the economy and the stock market, but that is in the future.

For now the stock market is set to rise for the rest of the year and well into next year. Yes it will have it step backs and pauses, but the overall trend is up.

The question is what to do? You always have to ask yourself what is the best way to profit from the current trend of the market. You then do that until it stops working and tells you that the trend has changed and then move to a more appropriate tactic that fits the new situation. Last year shorting was where the money was to be made. Going forward I believe it will be in individual stocks.

Interestingly, that is not what the individual investor is getting into.

According to a recent article in Investors Business Daily, the number of daily trades done through online brokers Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and Etrade has fallen since the March low in the stock market.

When it comes to stocks the average investor has backed away from them since March - which is incredible.

What they have been doing is moving into ETF's and the wild Forex currency market where they can gamble it up on 100-1 leverage.

In June and July trading volume in individual stocks through online brokers fell 15%.

It isn't that people are not trading.

By moving into leveraged ETF's instead of buying baskets of stocks traders now just make one trade in the ETF instead of several. That translates into fewer overall trades.

At the same time Forex trading is exploding. Average daily trading volume for Forex has soared 500% since 2001 and now is over $77 billion a day.

Forex has become what daytrading was in the late 1990's or online poker was a few years ago - a fad bringing lots of amateurs to the table.

I don't know if you have noticed, but there is a proliferation of Forex scams all over the Internet now. There are websites that claim to have "trading robots" and "automated systems" that will give you computerized trades that can take a few thousand dollars and make you a millionaire. It is unlikely that a single one of these things really work, but every week a new one of them pops up on the Internet.

What it tells us is that there is a flock of uneducated investors that are prey to these scammers.

Ironically I believe this is exactly the time when it makes most sense to play individual stocks. I told people in 2007 I would not give out any stock picks, because I saw a vicious bear market coming so I'm not someone who just tries to sell you stock picks. But with the market healthy individual stocks is the best place to make money now.

Much better than ETF's.

The reason is risk to reward. You can risk five or ten percent in a stock and if you buy the right one make 30% in just a few days. It is hard to do that in ETF's.

We have seen some profit taking the past few days. It is tough to get a market like this to fall much, but if the selling were to continue you should expect to see huge support in the 950-960 area of the S&P 500. But the market is so bullish now that it would be hard to even get it to go down that much.

My advice is to NOT worry about the stock market too much right now, but to focus instead on looking for opportunities in individual stocks to buy and then take them. Yes at some point I'd expect to see a quick five percent or so drop in the market at some point this year - probably in September or October - but you can't just worry about that and be afraid to do anything.

I'm adding the following stocks to the watchlist: OWW, SCSS, JAZZ, CMRG, CKEC, LCRD, TNC, AYR, NUHC, FLL, CIEN

Andy made this video overview of the stock market for you. To watch click here.

An email I got:

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Got out of NPD with 10K + profit thank you. Still down 40% for the year. I am looking for a trade and the reits look strong, maybe to strong. I am watching BZ CBEH NEP LVS OEH CX MAC CLNE CHNG and thinking of them for a trade. LVS and CHNG are down a little and could buy for less today. My other consideration is to pile up on more CGA and almost did yesterday morning. Damn it

I need a little feed back. Is my  thinking on the right track? Are any of my trade ideas valid? Sometimes I look at these charts and I am just not sure of myself.

Do China stocks trade in China? I see they open and close pretty much the same here. How do other markets affect stocks

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Some of the China stocks trade overseas and some don't. Depends if they are ADR's or not. I wouldn't worry about it, there are lots of stocks that trade overseas in Europe too.

The stocks I have on the watchlist I am simply watching. I'm watching to see if they continue to consolidate. If they do and the daily Bollinger bands come together (I use settings of 10, 1.5) then I will likely make a buy. If they don't then I won't buy. I have a very specific pattern and set up I'm looking for. If I don't see it then I don't buy.

For the past week I haven't seen this pattern materialize. It was happening the other week when I made several buys and started the top ten list. What is happening is that when I'm looking through all of the stocks there are many stocks that have gotten "overbought" or extended on the rally and simply need to pause. That is what is happening now, and the weakness the past few days should make some stocks line up in the next few days.

So in other words with the market rallying hard after I took my positions I sort of stepped back from adding new stocks to the top ten list in order to wait for the next pause or small correction in the rally, which it looks like we are getting now.

This is a stock on the watchlist that has the Bollinger Bands coming together the way I like to see. It is close to breaking out. Others on the list are not so close. I own some shares of the stock, but am not likely to put it on the top ten list, because it is more of a cyclical company and not a fast growing company so see it more as a trade.

This is a stock that was on the watchlist and did break out - putting it back on to see if it consolidates again. But see how the Bollinger Bands came close together before it broke out. Should have put this one one on the top ten list, but missed it. It has good earnings and a small valuation.

Andy made this video overview of the stock market for you. To watch click here.