The last move up in the S&P 500 over 1368 was unable to hold last week, and the Index went back down to explore the 1326 level one more time yesterday. While it is possible that there could be more of this back-and-forthing all the way through my March 22 turn date, I was looking for a move up over 1340 this morning to confirm that another run at 1368 is in the cards.

And we got that. At the time of this writing, the S&P is around 1355, and I think that the Index will not only get to 1368, but will also break through and head for 1440 — a familiar level to us by now. I do expect a reaction back down from 1440, perhaps as low as 1368 again, and if that roughly coincides with the March 22 date, I’ll be pretty confident that we are going to see a run up to new all-time highs. I suspect the news that will “explain” that action is that the credit crisis is under control thanks to the new, higher loan limits on Federal home loans.

In this next run up, I expect our stocks to do extremely well. I will have an updated list of most-likely-to-advance stocks in Thursday’s Radar Report, but there won’t be any surprises, and any recommendation now under my buy limit is a good candidate for purchase. In picking new purchases, always try to balance two conflicting goals: (1) diversify your portfolio by buying a brand-new position, versus (2) buying additional stock in an existing position to drop your average cost.