Patience is a hard skill to learn. But when the market is as hesitant as it currently is, patience is critical to your success as a trader.

The combination of the quick start and afternoon pullback resulted in a doji candle.

Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) has disappointed investors with sluggish growth, but at $17, and with buyout rumors surfacing, are shares ready to pop?

After Warren Buffett made his IBM (Nasdaq: IBM) purchase public this week, technology stocks have seen strong gains, with the big cap American technology stocks leading the charge.

Investors had expected the worst from the banks, which is why the financial index was down 30% since May. The market will not be able to break 1250 resistance and rally higher without the bank stocks.

When two of the biggest companies in the market miss earnings - and in Apple's case it was the first time in almost a decade it missed - and the market goes higher?

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) missed earnings estimates badly, and tech behemoth IBM (NYSE: IBM) came in light on sales.

With the stock market decline over the past two months, this earnings season promises to hold a few extra surprises.

Oil is more useful as an indicator than even stocks because of one thing: business.

The risk for Europe is not doing enough. If you give Greece debt forgiveness of 30%, but Greece still can't make its payments, then you haven't really accomplished anything.

Apple's (Nasdaq:AAPL) quarter wasn't horrible. The tech company reported earnings of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 a share, on $28.27 billion in revenue. For comparison's sake, Apple earned $4.31 billion, or $4.64 a share last year, and that was a blowout.

Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) knocked it out of the park last night. The company earned $2.7 billion on $9.72 billion in revenue for the third quarter. That revenue number represents a 33% gain over last year.

Earnings season got underway with an underwhelming start by Alcoa (NYSE:AA). The company beat on revenues, but missed pretty badly on EPS due to rising costs and weaker prices for aluminum.

How many times have stocks been down +1% at 3 pm only to rally and finish in the green?

There's a rumor making the rounds that EU will forgive 50% of Greek debt and increase the ESFS bailout fund to 2 trillion euros.

The market collapsed last week. For the past month, I've mentioned how difficult it will be for SPX to break the 1250 hump. And during the first half of September the bulls made a desperate attempt to hurdle the 1250 level.

The bulls managed to bring the SPX within a few percent of 1250 just hours before Ben Bernanke was scheduled to speak. And clearly, the bulls wanted (and were ready to get) QE3. But instead of QE3, Bennie and the Feds announced "Operation Twist."

And investors in the market shouted "SELL!"

The market popped again yesterday. The gains were impressive, as was the total volume. Once again, technology stocks led the charge higher as the U.S. indices posted their third day of gains. And our technology plays, like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) continued to do very well.

At one point the indices were up over 2%, but a 1% pull back just before the close prevented the bulls from finishing near session highs.

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The market popped again yesterday. The gains were larger on Monday, but it was still a strong showing by the bulls to rally the U.S. indices for a second straight day.

The market slumped lower yesterday and the bulls lost their four day winning streak. Volume was low in the decline, as it has been for most of the week.

Financials were the big losers yesterday; bank stocks, including Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) were all down more than 3%.

The market sank yesterday, but the selling pressure was hardly strong, or unexpected. Volume levels were naturally high. Not only did news that Steve Jobs resigned raise the volume for AAPL, but Warren Buffett pledged $5 billion to the struggling bank stock BAC. Both announcements were huge news for each company (BAC was momentarily up 15%), and both of their stocks happen to be some of the larger index components.

Yesterday morning I mentioned the two hurdles SPX faced. First, was 1175 resistance area. Second was the resignation of Steve Jobs and potential for a large decline to AAPL.

The market rose again yesterday in somewhat of a rocky session, but a gain nonetheless. Volume was once again high as the market recaptured 1155 support and challenged 1175 resistance.

Today we find out just how real the bulls are; because buyers will be up against 1175 resistance and have to overcome the news from Apple yesterday. The 1175 area was a strong support zone last fall and prevented the bears from taking stocks lower in November as troubles brewed across the pond in Europe.

The 1175 support level was not tested again until this month, and if the bulls are not careful 1175 could turn into a strong resistance zone.

In the near term I would expect the market to pull back as it hits 1175, but eventually it should mosey its way higher and up to 1197 resistance.

For the first time in over two weeks, the U.S. economy is back in focus. First we got 2Q earnings reports from Dell (Nasdaq:DELL) and Target (NYSE:TGT). Dell missed revenues slightly and offered a weak revenue forecast.

There was a time when Dell was an important measure of consumer and corporate spending. (It's sales mix is roughly 75% consumer and corporate, 25% government.)

And while the company did say the economic environment was challenging, Dell has also missed important trends, like data storage and tablets. We have to think some of the weakness in Dell's numbers are a direct result of Apple's (Nasdaq:AAPL) success...

The market had a productive day on Friday. Although the indices declined, many rebounded from over 2% down during the afternoon and closed near even. Volume was jacked during Friday's day of indecision, and it appeared as though the bulls had stolen some of the bears momentum.

Then, after the market closed on Friday, the analysts at S&P dropped a nuclear bomb on the market. Late Friday night, S&P lowered the U.S. credit rating from AAA.

Any stability the market achieved on Friday is gone. The downgrade of U.S. debt is an event many market participants were unprepared for.

The market weakened a little more on Tuesday, but the indices stabilized and kept the decline to a minimum. Volume levels were low as SPX consolidated at 1332 support. The industrials were hit the hardest and financials showed unusual strength. Large cap technology also continued to motor higher as stocks like HPQ, AAPL GOOG and MSFT rallied nearly 1%.

The TradeMaster portfolio was active again yesterday. On Monday a Chinese stock and RCMT were added to our long positions. Yesterday, F and another small cap stock were added, but F was a short.

Ford announced its second quarter results Monday before the market opened. Financial results were solid and EPS beat analyst expectations. And shares gapped 2% higher to begin the session. But high volume sales immediately dropped shares back to $13.15 from $13.44 intraday highs.

Congress and the Obama administration are at it again. Talks broke down over the weekend, which is a familiar development. The impasse is certainly weighing on the stock market.

Precious metals are rallying, bonds and stocks are down. Of these assets, it's the move in bonds that are most telling. Bond prices are falling, and yields are rising, because failure to pass a budget opens the door for a downgrade of U.S. debt from the ratings agencies. That, in turn, raises borrowing costs (interest rates) because repayment is suddenly less certain.

The market ripped higher yesterday. Volume also surged as investors dived back into the market on positive earnings results. Safety assets like gold and silver also took a dive as traders favored a risk trade.

Technology was the stand-out sector yesterday and I expect it to do well today as well. Last night iPad maker Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) reported a record second quarter. Apple earned $7.3 billion as net profit grew by 125%, and revenue grew 82% to $28.7 billion.

Apple did announce guidance below analyst estimates. But management at Apple is known for conservative guidance. Shares quickly jumped to $399 following the earnings announcement; and if Apple can keep that price today it would give the company a market cap of $365 billion, which is just shy of Exxon at $415 billion.

It's probably no surprise that Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) beat earnings expectations last night. After all, Steve Jobs is an egomaniac who reportedly always under-promises so he can enjoy the attention when he over-delivers. It's good showmanship, and good for a pop in the stock.

Still, the results were impressive. Net earnings beat by nearly $2 a share ($7.79 vs. $5.87 expected) and sales came in $3.6 billion better than expected at $28.6 billion. Apple sold 20.3 million iPhones and 9.3 million iPads.

Perhaps even more amazing, Apple added $10 billion to its cash hoard during the quarter. It now has $76 billion.

The market severely and unexpectedly dipped yesterday. Especially in the Nasdaq, which was down nearly 2%.

Volume also raced higher as the indices transitioned from gains following positive employment, inflation and sales data; and then quickly turned negative by noon.

In addition to the great economic data JPM blew away analyst estimates. The positive news from JPM had most big banks up 1% to start the session, but by midday the financial index was down 1%.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) killed it last night. Earnings growth was an amazing 36% over last year. This morning, analysts are scrambling to get their new price targets for Google out.

The market lost some ground to the bears on Friday, but for the week it was flat. The bears could not take out 1250 support and the bulls could not take back 1301 resistance. And those will remain the prices to watch until SPX can break out of its range.

But I am not so certain that a break-out from that range will occur soon. When you think about it; the economic news is slow this week - aside from a few CPI and GDP reports in Europe. But overall there is no major economic news set to be released this week. And I think you would need major news to break SPX out of this range. Then the following week is holiday shortened and also unlikely to provide a major move since earnings season starts shortly after the week concludes. So without catalysts, the market may stay stuck in a 50 point range for the next few weeks.

And that does not bode well for the bulls. In the past, earnings season has been reason to celebrate. In fact, for the past two years, earnings season has been great to stocks. But based on results by ORCL and MU last week, two big tech companies, this earnings season could be a disaster. And the worst part about the ORCL and MU reports was that the releases were not all that much different from reports the companies gave quarters ago. By all accounts the quarterly results were fine, not great, not bad, but the stocks sold hard.

The market was red hot Tuesday, obliterated Wednesday and asleep Thursday. Yesterday's activity was mild compared to the action earlier in the week, however volume levels were still decent. The mild session was to be expected after the big decline a few days ago. The hangover from that decline kept most bulls on the sideline yesterday. It was also unlikely that sellers would be able to takeover our key target of 1301 support on the first try. As a result, very little was accomplished by either group (bull or bear) yesterday. Although one small victory for the bears was to temporarily take oil prices below $100.

Yesterday, we talked about bubbles and tech stocks. While it's possible to argue that certain sub-sectors of the Nasdaq may have some bubble-like valuations, technology blue chips are definitely not in bubble territory.

As I noted, the Nasdaq 100 (NDX), which is comprised of the 100 largest companies on the Nasdaq, is currently trading with a trailing P/E of 12.5, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The pundits agree. It's a technology bubble. And all because social media stock LinkedIn (Nasdaq:LNKD) now trades with a P/E of 600 on a paltry $15 million in trailing earnings.

It was somewhat lost in the shuffle in Wednesday. Investors were so stunned at Fed Chief Ben Bernanke's admission that commodity inflation might accelerate over the next few months before the Fed is forced to act on interest rates, they missed the part where the Fed lowered its 2011 GDP growth estimates from a range between 3.4% -- 3.9% to 3.1%.

For anyone pinning his or her hopes on 3.9%, that's got to be disappointing.

But after yesterday's first read of Q1 2011 GDP growth -- a measly 1.8% -- investors are likely to take another look at the total message delivered by the Fed.

If you look at "pretax, pre-provision profits", which excludes taxes, loan loss reserves and one-time items, profits fell 40% year over year. That's clearly not a good trend for the banks. So how did banks post such good "headline" profits? Loan loss reserves, as we have discussed. Banks have been aggressively moving loan loss reserves back to the asset side of the balance sheet. And that's accounted for the lion's share of 1Q earnings. It also leaves the banks less protected if the economy tanks again...

Corporate America kicked it up a notch last week. And the S&P 500 appears to be taking out resistance at 1,335.

Bloomberg reports that 71% of the 188 MSCI World Index companies that have reported Q1 earnings have beaten earnings. Earnings from this group of companies are beating expectations by 8.8%. And I’m sure when similar data is available for the S&P 500, we’ll see similar statistics.

Only 20 companies from the S&P 500 have reported earnings so far. 15 of them beaten expectations by 0.7%. The pace of reporting for S&P 500 companies picks up today.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) beat expectations this morning. After the bell today, we’ll hear from IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Intel (Nasdaq:INTC). Then, tomorrow, we get results from Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL).