This week we are going to see the start of earnings season as Alcoa reports earnings on Wednesday, but earnings won't really heat up until next week when large numbers of companies start to report. The financial press loves earnings season, because it gives them something to talk about, but the last two earnings period in July and April really had no effect on the larger trend of the stock market and I really do not think this one will either.

In fact usually I don't pay much attention to earnings at all. I almost never buy or a sell a stock based on an earnings report. To me what is more important are the larger trends and the overall technical picture of the market.

We've been in a correction in a larger bull market for three weeks now. Such corrections usually end with the appearance of panic in the market and we got that last Thursday when the ratio of sell to buy volume on the NYSE and Nasdaq exceeded 9:1. The VIX also spiked up 10% while the put/call ratio jumped to one - showing that options players were in a mad scramble to buy puts.

On Friday the market averages went through their 50-day moving averages and bounced. I've been saying for awhile now that we'd probably see this level hit and that would be the time to think about buying if you aren't already in the market.

I think we are now exiting a correction phase and entering a consolidation period that will likely last for the next several weeks and see the market basically trade in a sideways range with 1075 on the S&P 500 marking resistance and 1020 marking support. I do think we'll get a bounce here, but it is possible that the market could break last week's low later this month and fall down to the 1010 area or so, but the odds of that happening are probably 1 out of 3 and I wouldn't worry about it, because we'd probably just see the market quickly bounce back up if that were to happen. Bottom line is that we have been in a market pause in a bigger bull trend for the past few weeks and that pause is likely to continue for the next several weeks, but as far as lower prices go we've probably seen the worst of it.

I used the drop Friday to buy a few stocks and going forward I plan on looking for stocks that appear to be poised to breakout for more potential buys. In this type of market that's what you want to do - use dips to buy and then keep an eye out for exceptional stocks.

There has been a lot of negative talk in the market. Late in August some well known commentators were talking about a Fall market crash. Robert Prechter was screaming for one and even Art Cashin on CNBC was saying that Fall would bring hell to investors. But Fall is here and all we've seen is an orderly correction.

In bull markets you don't want to get caught up in fear when the market has a pullback every once in awhile, but keep your eye on the ball and big picture. That means using dips as entry points and to always be looking for the next big sector or big stock.

I am adding two new stocks to the top ten list - PNCL and GOL. You can read the post about them by clicking here.

My complete watchlist is as follows:

My Real Portfolio: