Macro Outlook
Gas down (at least compared to last year, if not the years prior), consumer confidence up (just a bit) so retail sales should be up too.

Oops, maybe not: As per the Commerce Department, overall, retail sales fell by 0.4 % in September.

But this is also a "sorta-kinda" number: That drop includes the record-breaking 9.3% sales drop at your local gas station. Take that out of the equation, and retail sales perk up some 0.6%.

The wags say that this should be a good Christmas after all. Then again, they always say that. Maybe they'll be right, I don't see the largesse spreading across the board.

Rather, both the high and low end stores will be punished, while the sweet middle cleans up: WOW readers are already positioned for this via their Target calls, which are already up 123.4%, and trading at their highs again today.

Market Trends
The investing world is holding its breath, waiting to see if Dow 12,000 will be breached.

To tell you the truth, there's no real way to play the Dow right now. It looks like a step ladder with consecutive formations of five flat trading days, and then one pop, and then flat trading days, and then… well you get the picture.

This is uncharted Dow territory. At this juncture, I wouldn't recommend calls or puts. Dow 12,000 is a mental line and it'd be best to step back and observe…

However, small-cap stocks are still working toward hitting new highs, and continue to look strong. I'm talking primarily about the I-Shares Russell 2000 (IWO:NYSE), which is four points away from making a new 52-week high.

The Russell 2000 itself is 21 points away from a new 52-week high.

This run in the Dow has opened up investment on these small and mid-cap companies, and they have much more room to move based on historical data than the Blue Chips…

Material Profits
Looks like OPEC's going to get its production cut.

Announcements have hit the newswires that OPEC is lowering demand outlooks… by 100,000 barrels a day. That's barely a drop in the bucket, but you can be sure that OPEC will use this figure to slash production by 1 million barrels a day.

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