Titillating Thursday

Dow Jones 10,258 +284.54 +2.85%

NASDAQ 2,377.68 +81.80 +3.73%

S&P 500 1,103.06 +35.11 +3.29%

Believers won today. Heretics went without. The masses stampeded to victory. Logicians refused to wear rose-tinted glasses. Dr. McCoy (Bones) laughed heartily. Mr. Spock tried the rose tint. Illogical, he said. Illogical. Printing money does not cure the disease of debt. But the market stomped along.

Slept 4 1/2 hours until the last 45 minutes of the session. The market closed well — no serious selloffs. I've tried to analyze why I refused to buy at the open. It's purely mental. The odds favored bulls and yet I was still bugged out about the loss in VXX. Maybe still shell-shocked from losses in late April and early May on the long side.

I passed on BIDU at 70. It finished at 73.50.

I passed on AAPL at 250. Closed at 253.24. Heavy buying into the closing bell.

I passed on C. Stayed put at 4.02, up 4.15% (16 cents). The retrace levels for today's gain were barely touched. C came down to 3.99 early (I wanted 3.96) and stayed at the 4.01-4.03 level the rest of the day with a brief exception around 1:00 pm Eastern (back to 3.99).

I'll probably delve into AAPL and maybe BIDU, but financials still concern me. Ackman has his 150 million shares of Citi, but he didn't buy at 4.02.

All this aside, the one good thing about today is I knew when I was a step behind and chose not to chase, but to wait for the next opportunity instead. There's no advantage to buying right now ... unless the market becomes overly exuberant (again) or overly bearish (again). I have my dry powder. This is actually not a bad thing; definitely not the worst thing.

• EWY (44.81 +2.72 +6.46%) has recovered significantly since the North Korea scare earlier in the week. Koreaphiles probably knew the North would go silent after the latest threat. Seems to be the pattern. Bark day and night until the big dogs show up.

• FXE (123.22 +1.65 +1.36%) is much healthier today. So many Euro bears out there. I can't see ever going long (or short) this issue.

• FXI (39.73 +1.81 +4.77%) continues to bounce. It started bouncing last week off its bear low (more than 20% correction). Probably a case of TV media jumping on the bear wagon right at the point when the selling was done. As usual.

• GLD (118.69 +0.22 +0.19%) continued to stabilize following a selloff last week. Like FXI, TV's talking heads really started chattering about gold while it was topping. Smart money got out. Late money got stuck as GLD pulled back from 123. This ETF is still much safer than most stocks. Currencies will lose value as governments print more paper which in turn becomes closer in value to Monopoly money.

• SLV (18.12 +0.38 +2.14%) has much less volume than GLD, but will thrive if this run continues.

• GS (144.95 +5.00 +3.57%) is storming ahead as one of the rally's leaders. Was 134 just a couple of days ago.

• VXX (28.48 -2.70 -8.70%) had its worst day in some time. I caught most of that downturn overnight with a small position. FAZ (14.15 -2.11 -13.01) was hit even harder. FAS smoked the bears with a 12.8% gain to 25.55.

My bearish stance the past few weeks had saved me a lot of capital, but it's come back to hurt me the past couple of days in a limited way according to the math. My confidence needs a boost. Repetition, as good coaches know, will build confidence in a player. Repetition here has a lot to do with technical and fundamental analysis, so that's my goal today: to find empirical data to support this change of direction.

Even if the evidence proves otherwise — volume in the S&P 500 was at its lowest since early April — reason will prevail over emotion.